


Hold & Release

by UnderZeWeather



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Body Dysphoria, D&D Elements, Eating Disorders, Gay Disaster Keith (Voltron), Gender Dysphoria, High School AU, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mild Amnesia, OCD, Suicide Attempt, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-08-20 00:14:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20218618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderZeWeather/pseuds/UnderZeWeather
Summary: Everyone has problems. Some have it worse than others. Everyone deals with their pain in different ways. Keith... He didn't deal with his own issues that well. Now he is left with several questions; Why does Lance hate him? Why is he so invested in this stupid table top game? But most importantly; why did he try to kill himself?





	1. Awake

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so seriously. There is a lot of talk about suicide, bulimia, and body dysphoria in this fic. Also a lot of the information surrounding these topics is going to be bare bones. There is a plot relevant reason for this. So if you are not comfortable and have triggers you might want to skip this fic.
> 
> That being said I will try and remember to put what the major triggers are in each chapter at the start of each chapter. 
> 
> Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D
> 
> *****WARNING*** This chapter contains; talks about suicide, jokes about suicide, talks about bulimia**

_“We need to get him to a healing pod!” Yelled a frantic voice.. He felt a hand touch his face. “Come on man, stay with us! Where the fuck is Hunk?” The whole world seemed to shake and rumble. “We should have formed Voltron!”_

_“I’m fine you idiot… Just keep going. Pidge just set everything off.”_

_“Shut up! Don’t talk… Shit you’re bleeding pretty badly… I’m so sorry...”_

_“I’m not bleeding that badly you dumbass.” The sound of blasters going off down the hall quickly drew their attention. “Shit. I’m just slowing you down aren’t I?.”_

_“No you’re not. See, we’re right at the escape pods. It’ll be fine.” They quickly looked around to try and find viable escape pods. All of them had either been launched or damaged in a way that would make them unusable. They eventually found one that could work. “Perfect. Come on, we can get out.”_

_The escape pods were only big enough to fit one person, and even if they both squeezed in together they wouldn’t have enough room to pilot it. They would just be drifting off in space and be sitting ducks._

_“... We’re not going to both fit in it.”_

_“Yes we can. We just need to move around a little and it’ll be fine. You get in first and then I’ll-” They didn’t get time to answer before their injured companion shoved them into the pod and quickly activated the launch sequence. They banged against the glass, desperately trying to get out. “DON’T YOU DARE! DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE! OPEN THIS UP RIGHT NOW I FUCKING SWEAR!!!”_

_The injured party just smiled sadly at them and placed their bloodied hand on the glass. “I’ll be fine. Just get out of here.”_

_There was a slight hiss as the final seconds till launch started. “NO! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! YOU CAN’T! I-” They got launched out into space before they finished screaming._

_It was okay. They sighed and slowly slid down to the floor. The enemy was getting closer. He didn’t have the strength to wield his bayard anymore. At least one of them was able to escape. Just one of them… Just one… Just..._

***

Keith sat up in bed with a gasp. That dream felt much too real. It took him a few minutes to compose himself but he eventually calmed himself down. He coughed a little, his throat feeling sore. Another one of those dreams. They were always so vivid but completely ridiculous. Flying around in a robot Lion while fighting aliens? That was stupid. He started coughing harder.

Suddenly the bedroom door opened and a man stood in the doorway. From the silhouette this person looked familiar. “... Shiro?” He croaked.

The lights flicked on and Keith was staring at the familiar face of his father. He looked concerned. “Having another nightmare son?”

Right Shiro and his dad always had a similar silhouette. Especially when they had their arms crossed. “Yeah, kind of… I think I died or something?”

The older man tensed up when he heard that. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really. There’s not much to talk about… Did I wake up mum too?”

His father nodded. “Yeah. Do you want to talk with her?”

“No I just… I don’t want her to get all pissy in the morning because she didn’t get enough sleep because of me.”

He dad walked over to him and patted his head. “Your mum’s fine Keith. I’ll just make her a stronger cup of coffee in the morning. Do you want something to drink? That cough of yours is pretty nasty.”

“Yeah. That would be nice.”

“Want to come down to the kitchen with me?”

Keith nodded a little and followed his dad down to the kitchen. He let his eyes linger on family photos as he followed his dad. He coughed a few times and pulled a face. He wasn’t sick with a cold or something. His voice just felt very scratchy and horse. It was weird. His dad gave him a glass of water and Keith drank it, frowning a little at the pain. It felt like his throat had been sanded down or something. He started coughing again.

“You okay there Keith?”

“Yeah… Sore throat.”

His dad nodded. “So… You excited about going back to school?”

Keith scrunched his nose. When was the last time he was at school? Almost a month now? Almost, but he why was that again? He couldn’t really remember. “... Why was I out of school for a month?”

A mix of surprise and sadness quickly crossed his face. “... You really don’t remember?” Keith shook his head. “You’ll remember in a bit… And when you do, maybe you can tell us why you did it.”

Keith was really confused. What was he talking about? “Did what?”

Before his dad could answer his mum walked into the kitchen looking very tired and kind of grumpy. “Morning boys. I really should just set you as my alarm clock. You’ve been waking up at the same time every night for the past week.”

“Sorry mum…” Mumbled Keith.

She shrugged and started making herself some coffee. “It’s fine. The alarm was going to go off in half an hour anyway. Everyone want some coffee?” She didn’t bother hearing their replies and just started making coffee for everyone. “Keith, you have first shower. Gotta make sure you’re all bright and awake for school. Your friends have missed you a lot.”

Keith nodded slowly. Friends. His friends… No one really came to mind. When he thought about it he just got flashes of blue, green, and yellow. But he couldn’t put a name to those colours. He didn’t feel like he could. At least not right now. His mum gave his coffee and he took a sip. It was bitter and hurt his throat.

He coughed and spluttered a little. His dad took the cup away from him and smiled at him. “Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. How about you have a shower?”

Keith just nodded and walked to the bathroom. His throat hurt and now his neck was starting to hurt. As he walked he looked over his shoulder and saw his mum was following him with her coffee in hand. “Do you need something?”

She shrugged. I’m just going the same way you are. We both need to go in the same direction.”

“Oh… Okay.” He walked into the bathroom and took note that she stopped walking just before he closed the door. It was kind of weird, but not suspicious or anything. He looked around the basin for his toothbrush and found what he assumed was his. He squeezed some toothpaste onto his brush and looked at himself in the mirror. He dropped his toothbrush.

Around his neck was a was a dark purple bruise in a perfect ring. It wasn’t thin either, it was thick. Like someone had tried to strangle him with a rope. No, it looked like he had a noose around his neck. A noose? Why a noose? Only one word came to mind when he saw that. Suicide.

He could hear a faint ringing in his ears and flashes of something behind his eyes. A rope, a tree, laughing, struggling, falling, laughing, panic, suffocating, darkness. He was on the ground coughing uncontrollably.

He felt hands on his shoulders and his head snapped up to see Krolia, but not Krolia. Her skin wasn’t purple at all. She just looked human. A human Krolia. She smiled kindly at him. “It’s okay Keith. Just breathe. Everything is fine now.”

“... Mum?” He quietly mumbled. “What the hell is going on? I don’t… What the hell is going on?”

She smiled and helped him to his feet. “It’s okay dear. The doctors said you might be a little confused for a few days. You were asleep most of yesterday and the day before.”

“Did I try to kill myself?”

Her kind smile wavered and she hugged him tightly. “Yes… But things are okay. Things are going to get better now. Okay? Your father and I love you so much and we will do everything we can to make you feel happy and supported.”

“...” Keith awkwardly patted her back. “Thanks…”

She smiled and kissed his forehead. “Now, you have your shower and get ready for the day. I know you don’t like turtlenecks but the weather is getting cold and it’ll be easier than having everyone look at you.”

“... Okay.” Keith calmed down a little and showered once she had left the bathroom and went to get dressed. The whole time he would periodically reach up and touch his neck. He didn’t understand this. Why would he try and kill himself? It didn’t make any sense to him. He didn’t think anything in his life was pushing him over the edge like that. 

After what felt like forever he was sitting back at the dining room table while his parents were running around getting ready for their day. It was so weird. They gave him oatmeal to eat since anything else hurt his throat. It tasted alright. It reminded him of some stuff that he ate a while ago, but that stuff was warmer and had the consistency of jello mixed with tapioca.

While he poked the least few spoonfuls of oatmeal at the bottom of his bowl his dad put his school bag next to him. “Everything’s all packed and ready to go.”

Keith nodded and quickly checked his bag just to make sure. He had everything. After a quick search he found a battered looking notebook that didn’t look like school stuff. He took it out and quickly flipped through it. It looked kind of like a diary or something. He glanced up at his parents. “Um, what is this?”

His mum looked over at him. “Oh, that’s the notebook Mr Shirogane told you to write in to help you vent or something… That reminds me, you’ll need to see him before your class starts.”

Keith slowly nodded as he tried to remember Mr Shirogane. He was… his neighbour and he worked at the school as the school counselor. They practically grew up together. He was like family. Kind of. He’d been around a lot. Shiro had been helping him through some issues. Issues that he didn’t really remember right now.

“Okay. I can do that.” He put the book back in his bag and walked to the car. His mum was driving him today. She needed to speak to some of the staff members about him. He had no idea what she would say but it annoyed him a little. But what annoyed him more was the annoying turtleneck. He didn’t like anything around his neck like this but he understood why he was told to wear one.

They walked to the office and she started talking with the woman at the front desk while Keith just looked around the room. He watched teachers coming in and his eyes lit up when he saw a man with a familiar puff of white hair. “Shiro!”

Shiro saw him and went from surprised to relieved. “Keith. It’s so good to see you again.” He looked over at Krolia and smiled a little at her. “Mrs Kogan. Mind if I talk to Keith for a bit?”

She nodded and gently nudged Keith. “Go ahead.”

Keith just smiled and happily followed Shiro into his office and sat down on a chair while Shiro went and sat at his desk. He smiled kindly at him. “How are you Keith? Are you feeling better? Your teachers have really missed you and so has everyone else in the group.”

“... The group?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You know, The Paladin’s of Voltron. We haven’t been able to play without the Black Paladin.”

Keith was kind of confused. “The Black Paladin?”

“Yeah… Do you not remember?”

Keith shrugged. “I um… I kind of do? I um… I guess my head isn’t all there since I tried to kill myself? Did I actually kill myself? You kill brain cells when you try to off yourself right?”

Shiro looked very uncomfortable. “I guess a bit of amnesia might be expected… But everyone really missed you. Do you feel up to playing the game with us today after school? I can drop you home when it’s done like usual.”

Keith just nodded slowly. “Okay. I can do that.” He looked down at the floor and kicked his feet a few times. “Shiro? Do you know why I tried to kill myself? Like, I don’t remember anything that would make me want to kill myself and my parents wouldn’t talk about it… Do you know?”

Shiro frowned a little, he still looked uncomfortable. “Honestly, I do not know. One day you just decided to kill yourself… None of us saw any signs and no one heard anything about you being bullied in person or online. I’m sorry I can’t give you answers.”

“O-okay… I guess I’ll see you after school then?” 

“Okay. Classroom 2-B.”

***

School was pretty quiet for the most part. There were a few teachers that gave him weird looks along with a few students. He was pretty sure rumors had been spreading around about him. He heard whispers but he didn’t really bother to pay much attention to it. He didn’t care about people talking about what might have happened when he wanted to know what actually happened.

Eventually lunch came around but Keith didn’t want to eat. He just ended up walking around the hallways until he eventually found an empty classroom. He pushed it open and went inside. There was nothing remarkable about it. The place was just quiet. He looked out the window and wasn’t surprised to see he was pretty high up already. On the third floor by the looks of things.

He heard the door swing open and Keith jumped a little. He was ready to apologize to whatever teacher had caught him, but he ended up looking at another student. A rather tall and lanky tanned teenager with thin brown hair and tired blue eyes. 

“Oh hey Keith. Looks like you finally woke up.”

Keith frowned a little as he tried to remember who this was. “Yeah. Had to do it eventually right?” This was… Lance. He was part of this too. He was kind of an asshole.

Lance just shrugged. “Not really. Heard you were medically dead for like five minutes before your heart started beating again. Fucked up man.”

“Oh, who told you that?”

“Heard people talking. Thought you were gonna end up on life support and then your folks would shut it off. Carve you up like a pig and dish out your organs to those who needed it. Shit like that. Happy you’re still alive but like, I’m trying to be realistic here.”

“Okay?” There wasn't any malice behind what Lance was saying, at least not that Keith could detect. “So… How are you?”

Lance shrugged and leaned against the window next to him. “Not much. Mum started painting over all the nutrition information on snacks and junk so I’d stop obsessing over calories. Kind of worked I think? I’m eating slightly more now and actually keeping it down.”

“That’s… That’s good.” That’s right. Lance was bulimic. It wasn’t too hard to tell that if you actually paid attention to him. But it seemed like no one did for the longest time. Probably because it was more associated with being a female thing rather than a male thing. 

Lance hummed a little. “So, since you’re not hanging around anymore, what are you up to?”

“... Hanging around? Really?”

He shrugged. “You know me. I’m all about that inappropriate humour to mask the pain.”

“Yeah.” They both stood in silence for a bit and watched people walking around outside. Walking around like a bunch of ants. He closed his eyes and tuned everything out. Just letting it turn into white noise. Just white noise.

Lance nudged Keith’s shoulder. “Hey. You listening?”

“Hmm?”

Lance offered Keith a pudding cup with all the nutritional information scribbled out with a black marker. “You look like you haven’t eaten anything in awhile.”

“Um… Okay?” He took it from him and looked at the cup for a bit. “Have you eaten today?”

Lance quickly became defensive. “What the fuck Keith? I’m trying to be nice to you and you’re asking me if I’ve eaten? What the fuck man?”

“Whoa, Lance, calm down. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“...” He sighed a little and looked away. “I know… I know… I have been eating more and keeping it down… That is just too much and too sweet for me right now. Thought you’d want it since I assumed you can only eat soft things because you tried to do pull ups with your neck.”

“Yeah. Thanks… I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

“Hey, I thought I was the one that had the eating disorders. You can’t be the suicidal guy and have an eating disorder too.” He whined. “Eating disorders is my thing.”

“You know you’re more than an eating disorder, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s my big thing. I’m working on other stuff too.”

“Good to know.”

“... So are you up for the game today?”

“The game? Yeah, Shiro mentioned it.”

Lance nodded slowly. “Yeah… Mr Shirogane canceled the game since we couldn’t really play with one of our paladins in the ICU after they tried to kill themselves… And none of us wanted to play without you there anyway...”

“... Sorry about that. So, how is the game going?” He didn’t really remember much about the game Shiro had talked about.

Lance shrugged. “Nothing much… Mr Shirogane and Allura have started to take a back seat in the game, only really just nudging us along to make the major decisions. Coran’s still having fun being the DM for the game.”

“Right…”

“What? You got some retrograde amnesia or something?” He asked. “The lack of oxygen kill your memory brain cells or something?”

Keith shrugged. “I guess… The week leading up to everything is kind of blurry…”

“Oh.” Lance seemed a little upset about that. “Well, in our last game we fought some Galra, Pidge’s lion got launched through several Galra ships. Hunk managed to use his cooking skills to make more of those mirror glass cookie things since that part of the castle ship keeps breaking. Shiro almost got kidnapped again. Allura did some weird shit with the quintessence field. I tried and failed to seduce a Galra guard… And you got blasted into outer space, again. You’re lucky your class gives you the astral plane perk so your lion managed to grab you. In other words, I’m surprised we didn’t all fucking die.”

Keith nodded a little. That seemed to make sense to him. “Okay… What is the game called again? Sounds like Monsters and Mana…”

“Nah, it’s Voltron. It’s like Monsters and Mana, but in space. So aliens and junk.”

“Huh, alright.”

“Yeah…”

Keith remembered Voltron. It was a game. Something that they were playing because Allura was some university student who is trying to write a thesis on the positive links between tabletop RPG games fucked up teens. Coran, the principal, approved but only if he supervised. Shiro had to be involved too since he was the school counselor. He handpicked him, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge to be involved. Their parents happily signed the wavers. Everyone was hoping that it would lead to their children getting fixed. 

“Hey Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“Did anything else happen during the week before I tried to kill myself? Like, what did I do? Did I say anything or act weird?”

Lance tensed up a little and clenched his jaw. “Look, we didn’t talk that much during that week. You were distant and shit… Besides we aren’t that close anyway. We mainly just talk during lunch or when we play the game. If anyone knows what went down it would be Mr Shirogane.”

“Shiro huh?” That might be a dead end. Shiro didn’t seem to want to talk to him about that stuff. Not that he could blame him. He didn’t even know who found him hanging anyway. Keith was tired of not understanding anything.

“Yeah, Mr Shirogane.” Spat Lance. “So why don’t you just fuck off and go suck his dick or something.”

Keith stared at Lance in shock. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”

“Go and suck Mr Shirogane’s dick.” Snapped Lance. “But wait, your throat is all fucked up you’ll just have to ride his dick instead.”

“What the actual fuck Lance?”

“It’s so fucking obvious that you and Mr Shirogane have a thing going on.” He spat. “Everyone knows Shiro is gay, and you go home with him every fucking day after we’ve finished the game and all you every talk about is Shiro this and Shiro that!”

“Hey, you brought up Shiro, not me! What the fuck are you talking about?!”

Lance death glared at him and stormed out of the classroom. He flipped a desk on the way out leaving Keith very confused and kind of hurt. Was Lance always this explosive? He didn’t really understand. He and Shiro were friends at most. They had known each other since way before he had started going to this school. Why was Lance acting like this?


	2. Table top

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More suicide references and jokes so there's your trigger warning. Hell, there will probably be lots of suicide jokes in every chapter, so have fun with that. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

After his interaction with Lance, Keith didn’t really talk to anyone else that day and tuned everything out. Eventually the day was over and Keith ended up standing outside of classroom 2-B. He could hear things being moved around behind the door. Probably Shiro setting things up or something.

“Keith!” Called a voice.

He looked over to see a short student in a green shirt. Green. Pidge. This was Pidge. Pidge has body issues. Not in the sense that they had an eating disorder or anything, but they had some major body dysphoria issues. They only just tolerated being called female on their good days.

He smiled a little at them. “Hey Pidge. How are you?”

“I’m fine. But how are you? I thought you were coming back next week, not today. I’m really glad you’re back now.” They said. “I… We… we didn’t think you were coming back…”

“I didn’t think I would either.” Said Keith quietly. “But I’m happy to be here now I guess?”

“You guess?”

“Well it’s not like I’m not happy to be here.”

“Oh okay… Shall we go in?”

“Oh yeah.” Keith opened up the door and let Pidge in. Inside Coran, Allura, and Shiro were setting things up. Hunk was there too sitting in the corner of the room as he flipped a folder open and closed it repeatedly. OCD. It wasn’t as bad as it was a few months ago from what he could remember.

“We’re here!” Called Pidge as they took a seat. “Where’s Lance?”

“He’ll be here soon.” Said Hunk. He finally closed the folder for the last time and visibly relaxed. “He had to duck into the bathroom.” He walked over to them and smiled at Keith. “Hey buddy. Good to see you again. We missed you a lot.”

“Thanks.” Keith felt a little awkward but these were his friends. His friends were okay. He was safe here. Shiro handed him a folder and Keith thankfully took it and had a flip through it. It was his character stuff. 

So he was a… level 11 rogue like character? Nice. He looked like more of the detailed information. He could read, write, and speak common and Galra? Okay. Weird, but he could deal with it. He looked at some of the notes and made a few mental notes. Apparently his character was actually half Galra and had some magic Galra knife thing that he inherited from his Galra mother. Now he could duel wield his Galra knife and his Altean bayard. It was pretty neat. He also used to be the Red paladin, but now he was piloting the black lion? But his character’s name was Red? This might get confusing.

Suddenly Lance walked into the room looking more tired than usual as he popped a few breath mints into his mouth while giving everyone a half hearted wave. “Hey.”

Shiro gave Lance a questioning look. “Mints?”

“I like the taste.” He practically growled at Shiro. “I wasn’t fucking purging.”

“Language.” Reminded Shiro. “Okay, I trust you Lance.”

Lance looked very apprehensive and quickly took a seat between Hunk and Pidge. He glared at Shiro for a few seconds before his eyes locked with Keith’s and he was just staring at him with something Keith could only describe as a burning hatred.

Everyone else seemed to ignore it and Coran quickly set up the mini figures on the man. “Alright everyone. Last time we left off, Black and the Princess were on the bridge of the castle ship, Green and Yellow were performing upgrades on the Lions in the hanger, Red was in the training room, and Blue was walking around the halls. I think we should start with Lance.” He smiled at Lance. “So Lance, where does your wandering take you?”

Lance thought for a moment then moved his mini figure towards the training room. “Blue is going to talk to Red about the last mission.”

Coran nodded and stroked his moustache. “Sounds like a good idea. Good to get that out in the open.”

***

_Without much notice the door to the training room suddenly flew open and Blue happily walked into the training room. “What up Red?!” He yelled. This caused Red to almost get hit by one of the training robots. “Hey, don’t lose your head there.”_

_Red rolled his eyes. “End training… What do you want Blue?”_

_Blue shrugged and sauntered over to him. “Nothing much just got this little thing on my mind. Just a little thing I thought that maybe you could clear up for me. Think you can do that Red?”_

_“... I guess?”_

_“Okay cool. So, what the absolute fuck was that back there?!” They yelled. “What the fuck is wrong with you? How the fuck could you do that?”_

_“Whoa, calm down there. What are you talking about?”_

_“Oh, so if I or like Yellow, or Green decide to do some big self sacrificing shit you get to chew us out, but if it’s you or Black no one gets to question you?”_

_“There was no other way!” Snapped Red. “You really think that I would have done that if there wasn’t some other way to do it?”_

_“Shut the fuck up! You’ve got some fucked up hero complex! Always have! You keep running head first into danger trying to get yourself killed while going out in a blaze of glory!” Snapped Blue as they quickly closed the distance. “You try to act like it’s no big deal but it is! It is a huge deal! We’re meant to be a team but you’re not a team player! Why can’t you trust any of us who isn’t Black?”_

_“I do trust you guys I just…”_

_“Oh you just trust Black the most because you two have some unbreakable bond. You two fucking behind our backs or something because all that shit certainly isn’t fucking platonic!” Snapped Blue. He was fuming now._

_“Hey! I have no idea what’s going on in your head, but there’s nothing like that going on between me and Black!” Red was confused. He didn’t know why Blue was mad at him and bringing Black into this. Black had nothing to do with it. “Just because you have some secret hard on for Black along with a fuck ton of daddy issues doesn’t mean you can take it out on me because you’re a little bitch!”_

_Blue looked like he was going to rip into Red. “Fuck off Red! Out of all of us you’re the one with the daddy issues! Next time you decide to go running head first into some Galra strong hold I am not going to back you up! But you know what? It would be so much fucking easier to hang yourself if you wanted to kill yourself. Learn how to tie a fucking knot and maybe you’ll succeed next time.”_

***

“Lance!” Snapped Shiro. “That is not appropriate to talk about!”

Lance just rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “What? Aren’t we meant to use this to use this time to express ourselves? Besides, I can’t be the only one that’s fucking pissed that Keith tried to kill himself!”

Keith frowned a little and looked away from them. Lance was a dick. He stood up from the table and silently walked out of the room. He didn’t want to be there. He just didn’t want to deal with this.

“Yeah, just walk the fuck away!” Snapped Lance. “Remember, crossing the street is for attention, down the road for results!”

“LANCE!”

“What?”

Keith slammed the door shut and started walking down the hall. Lance hated him. He remembered that clearly now. Lance was always trying to goad him into some kind of fight be it verbal or physical. Now this fucker was just telling him to kill himself. He didn’t have to deal with this.

Shiro quickly followed him. “Keith, wait! Slow down for a moment. Let’s talk about this!”

“Leave me alone Shiro.” Said Keith. “Lance clearly doesn’t want me to be in the group and would rather I just fucking died!”

“Keith…” Shiro put his hand on his shoulder. “Lance has a lot of problems with impulse control. It isn’t that he doesn’t like you he just… It has been a very emotional couple of weeks for everyone. None of us were sure you were ever coming back. This isn’t an excuse for his behaviour, just an explanation… He isn’t trying to be malicious he’s just…” 

“An asshole?”

“Kind of… Will you come back and keep playing or do you want to go home?”

“I… I just want to have a few minutes to myself.” Keith didn’t want to ruin the game for everyone else. “I just… I need some time alone.”

“... Okay. Just stay outside the door and don’t go anywhere. Come back inside when you feel like you can. Okay?”

Keith nodded. “Okay.”

Shiro nodded and walked back into the classroom. He could hear Lance raising his voice but couldn’t hear what they were saying. Shiro’s voice was kind of loud too, but he wasn’t shouting. It was that slightly raised, but firm, and commanding tone. It made Keith feel bad for Lance, even though the fucker just told him to kill himself.

He nervously tugged at the turtleneck and started to cough. He felt sick. He didn’t understand why Lance was so hung up about him and Shiro. Did something happen between him and Shiro in the last week that Lance found out about? Keith didn’t think there was anything going on between him and Shiro. He felt bad.

Suddenly the door opened up and Lance was there with Shiro. Lance still looked pissed off, but his expression softened a little when he saw Kaith. Shiro cleared his throat and lightly nudged Lance. “Lance has something he wants to say to you.”

“... I’m sorry I told you to kill yourself.” He muttered. “I’m still fucking pissed off that you did it and I’m not handaling it well… I thought we were friends, but you just tried to escape. It was like just trying to be around people made you suicidal… It pissed me off. Can you please come back and play with us? Me being a petty bitch shouldn’t get in the way of something we all like… Even if we’re just mice for Allura’s thesis.”

Shiro shook his head a little and looked over at Keith. “Well?”

“... Okay. Let’s keep playing.”

***

Keith went back to the game and Coran made sure to not have any parts where Lance and Keith were alone for very long. It was okay and he did have a few interactions with Hunk and Pidge. Then it was over. Everyone packed their things away and everyone left.

Keith stood in the car park with everyone as their families came to pick them up. Pidge’s mum picked them up first, followed by Hunk’s parents. Allura then left and Coran had to leave due to some prior engagement. He apparently left there last or something. Shiro didn’t seem to mind. He was happy to stand there to wait for Lance’s family to come and pick him up.

So they waited… and waited… and waited...

Shiro awkwardly cleared his throat. “Your parents do know you’re still at school. Right Lance?”

Lance just shrugged. “The old man’s probably still at work and my ma’s run off her feet again… I’ll just take the bus.” He started to make his way towards the bus stop near the school when Shiro called out to him.

“Hey, wait a second their Lance. I can take you home. I drop Keith off all the time.” 

“Of course you would.” He muttered.

Keith just rolled his eyes. “Come on asshole. Shiro’s trying to be nice. Do you really want to ride the bus back just because you’re stubborn prick?”

Lance glared at him for a moment before he relented. “Okay fine. Whatever.” They all walked over to Shiro’s car and Lance quickly climbed into the back. He kept his backpack held tightly to his chest. “Do you need directions?” He practically growled.

Shiro just smiled at him and nodded as he settled into the driver’s seat. “That would be really helpful Lance. Thank you.”

Lance just rolled his eyes and gave Shiro directions to his place and practically sprinted out the car when Shiro pulled up in front of his house. Not even so much as a thanks. That pissed Keith off a little.

As they drove back to Keith;s place he couldn’t help but ask. “Why is Lance so angry at you?”

Shiro shrugged. “Lance has an attitude problem, and it’s hard to change his mind when he gets an idea in his head… I really think he needs to see a professional therapist outside of school hours, but his family just insist it’s a phase… Everyone’s parents kind of just saw what you guys are going through as a phase…”

That made Keith squirm uncomfortably. Everyone’s parents? Did that mean his parents thought what he was going through just a phase? That being suicidal was just a dumb teenage thing and only started taking it seriously after he almost died? He could feel his heart rate starting to pick up and he started to involuntarily curl in on himself. Trying to make himself as small as possible.

“Easy there Keith.” Said Shiro in that soothing voice of his. “Just take a few deep breaths and concentrate on that. Can you do that for me?” Keith nodded and followed his instructions and just focused on his breathing. Once he had calmed down and wasn’t going to spiral into a panic. “Better now? Want to talk about it?”

“... Did my parents know?” He asked weakly. “Did they know and just brush it off?”

“They asked me to start talking to you because they were concerned. They might not have shown it around you, but they cared about you.” 

“It never really felt like they did.” Muttered Keith. “Mum just… After she popped me out she was shipped off overseas to work in the air force and the dad was in the ICU after that fire almost killed him and… Neither of them were really there for me when I was younger. It feels like I’m living with strangers. With fakes. Like neither of them are real or actually want to be around me, or if they are here it’s to try and keep me happy.”

“They do want to be around you Keith.” Reassured Shiro. “They are both still dealing with the fact you tried to kill yourself and it worried them a lot. Like it would any sane parents.” 

“I guess…” Keith sighed. That was enough talking about that for the moment. “Can I ask you about something Lance said to me?”

“What did he say this time?”

“Well for starters I don’t have any memory a week leading up to me killing myself so yeah… Anyway he didn’t directly say it, but he strongly implied that we were having sex.”

Shiro made a very surprised sound. “Really? Is this just a him thing or is there an actual rumour going around the school about this? Because I could get fired over that accusation.”

“It’s a Lance thing. I haven’t heard anyone mention it to me before.”

“... Okay. That’s good… But seriously let me know if you hear anything like that. I’m an openly gay teacher that’s looking after vulnerable minors. Some of the more conservative members of the PTA wouldn’t hesitate to get me fired and charged with a sex crime. And just to make things crystal clear, no. No we are not having sex. We have never had sex. We never will have sex. You’re like a brother to me.”

“Noted.” Keith yawned a little and tried to keep his eyes open, but he was tired.

“Tired huh? Well you had a big day.” Said Shiro. “If you want to nap for a bit you can go ahead. I’ll wake you up when we get back to your place.”

Keith nodded and closed his eyes. He was tired but he still couldn’t help listening to the radio playing. It was some talk show thing that Keith didn’t really care about at the moment. But he couldn’t help but listen to anyway.

“And that’s not a conspiracy theory? They are just old Native American cave paintings and stuff.”

“Aw, come on. Think about how cool it would be if it really was Aliens.”

“Aliens shaped like cougars? Right. Sure. I’m going to need a few drinks before I start believing that. I’ll smoke some weed too. Maybe then I’ll expand my mind enough to believe that crap.”

“Ha, ha, ha. Well you might not believe but some of our callers do. We have a caller on line one. Hey there, what do you think about the cave paintings? Alien conspiracy, or Native American art?”

_“Suh nautudonc su olbits dluahs ow ssorp rof oram nautimrafnu?”_

“Ha, ha, ha. Really? That is an interesting question. What do you think?”

“Well if Aliens do exist they are doing a crappy job. If they exist then they are either at our technological level or lower. Trust me, climate change will have destroyed us all by the time alien’s come to earth.”

“Such a pessimist. Any last words before he go to another caller?”

_“Tan wan. Ovow ydiorli dohsep rua kcel hgeano. ovug tu I wof sotenum dni ow lluw yrt niugi.”_

“Aw, hope you have a good evening too.”

Keith looked down at the radio and scowled. What language was that? It didn’t sound like anything he knew. He looked over at Shiro. “What language was that?”

“Hmm?”

“On the radio just now. What was that?”

“... English?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but what about the other language?”

“Sorry, wasn’t paying attention. Maybe their phone connection was really bad?”

“... I guess?” It did sound kind of garbled. It happened sometimes. He put it out of his mind as Shiro pulled into his driveway. Keith thanked him and quickly got out of the car. 

Shiro also got out and called out after him. “Hey, if your parents aren’t home you can come over if you like? I think they would both prefer someone was with you than you being home alone.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Keith went home and looked around. His mum was in the kitchen making dinner. “Hi mum.”

She looked over at him and smiled. “Hey honey. How was school?”

Keith shrugged. “It was alright I guess. School was school… Where’s dad?”

“He’s doing night shift this week.” She informed. “So he’ll be getting home when you head off to school for a while.”

“Ah, okay.” He sat at the table and started to take his books out of his bag and started to do some homework. It was just finding stuff in the textbook and paraphrasing the answer. It was so easy he hardly had to pay any actual attention to it.

After he finished with that he went to grab another book and ended up knocking over the diary Shiro had apparently told him to write in. This would probably have a few things in it about why he tried to kill himself. He felt a little embarrassed that he had forgotten it up until now and started to flip through the later pages

***

_Red walked into the lounge room. It was late at night, or at least it was late in the castle ship’s day and night cycle. He just wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but Blue was there. He was by the window staring out into space._

_Red sighed and reluctantly walked over to him to stand by the window. Space was so vast and endless. It was beautiful and haunting at the same time. It was about then that Red noticed that Blue’s eyes are puffy and red, like he had been crying._

_“... Are you okay?”_

“What do you care?” Asked Blue.

_“Why wouldn’t I care?”_

_Blue scoffed and rubbed his eyes a little more. “You always go off on your own. I’m not used to people doing that Red… We’re meant to be a team. A family. We’re supposed to stick together. How can we keep working together to save the universe when you just run away all the time…”_

_“... I’m sorry.”_

_Blue looked surprised. “Excuse me? Did I hear you right? The prideful, stoic, Red is apologising to me?”_

_“Take it or leave it. I’m not saying it again.” Muttered Red._

_“Okay I get it.” Laughed Blue. “But can you tell me what you’re sorry for? Please?”_

_Red huffed and crossed their arms, pouting a little. “I’m sorry I do shit on my own. I’m not used to having to rely on people… Guess that makes me a pretty shitty leader.”_

_“Yeah, kind of does. But you know what? You keep cool under pressure. I don’t think any of us would be able to be able to do what you do… Just rely on us more. We aren’t all useless. Yellow is a complete tank, Green is the smartest person here, Princess has one of the best tactical minds I know. Remember to involve them more.”_

_“What about you?”_

_“What about me?”_

_“You’re our sharpshooter. I know for a fact if it wasn’t for you that several missions would have been complete failures.” Said Red. “If you’re trying to hype up the whole team to me don’t forget yourself.”_

_Blue seemed surprised to hear Red say that. He started laughing. “Aw, you do actually care about me.”_

_“Of course I care.” Said Red. “You, everyone… You all have families to go back to after the war is over. You need to survive to be able to see them again. The least I can do is make sure you guys stay alive to do that.”_

_Blue frowned and stared at Red in confusion. “Is that why you’re so reckless and do things that could kill you when other team members are more qualified than you are? You don’t want us to die?”_

_Red shrugged and looked back out at the stars. “Better someone with no ties to family die than someone with a loving family. You, Yellow, and Green talk about seeing your families all the time. Even Black has someone waiting for him on Earth. The least I can do as the team leader is to do what I can to keep you all safe until you can see them again.”_

_Suddenly Blue closed the distance and embraced Red in a crushing hug. “No.”_

_“No?”_

_“You don’t get to decide you’re going to go all kamikaze to try and save us if push comes to shove… If that time happens I’m not going to let you do something so stupid alone. You go, I go.”_

_Red laughed weakly and patted Blue’s back. Over dramatic as always. “What are you going on about? Sounds like you’re trying to propose something.”_

_“Yeah I am. Fuck the universe. I want to make a pact.”_

_“... What kind of pact?”_

_“A suicide pact.”_

***

“Put the book down Keith.” Said his mum as she put a plate of food in front of him. It was some kind of mushy looking meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Soft food. Soft, mushy and kind of gross looking.

“Thanks mum.” Keith put down the diary and picked at his food. It didn’t look very appealing, but he forced it down. His throat hurt.


	3. Hanging tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gang plays more of their game. In this one Lance is kind of multiclassing a bard and a gunslinger (homebrew) because I think that makes the most sense for him. Feedback would be very much appreciated. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

_“You know, we really need to eat something rather than food goo.” Said Green as they picked up a spoonful of food and dropped the gunk back onto their plate. “Or like, at least add something to give it more flavour?”_

_Yellow shrugged. “Well next time we land on a planet we can stop off at a market and I’ll try to get some stuff to make more human food.”_

_Blue sighed and pushed his untouched plate away. “I hate this stuff… It’s like flavourless pudding… I can’t even look at this crap anymore.”_

_“Come on guys.” Said Black. “It isn’t that bad. Red is fine with eating it.”_

_Red just looked up at them with a mouthful of food goo. “Hmm?” He swallowed. “What? It’s just food. This is all we have. What else are we meant to eat?”_

_Blue shrugged. “You could eat me?” Green and Yellow laughed while Black just smiled and shook his head._

_Red didn’t get the joke. “Considering how many chemicals you put on your face I’m pretty sure I would die if I even tried to eat you.”_

_“Oooooo, sick burn!” Cackled Green. “Oh man… Anyway, I’m going to go and see if the lions are done getting upgraded. Yellow, I might need some help if something goes wrong.”_

_“You got it buddy.” Yellow quickly grabbed the empty plates and put them away. “Blue, finish your food goo.” _

_Blue just sighed loudly and pushed the plate away. Black just shook his head. “Alright you guys. Yellow, Green, when you’re done come to the training deck when you’re done. Red, Blue, finish eating and get to the training deck. We’re doing team training today.”_

_Red and Blue groaned while Yellow and Green left with Black. When they were alone, Blue picked up a spoonful of the goo and reluctantly ate some. He cringed and swallowed it like it was made of sand. He pushed his plate away again and sighed. _

_“I can’t eat this shit anymore… I just can’t… I need to eat something else… Anything else…”_

_“Just eat your goo.”_

_“No it’s nasty. I’d rather starve.”_

_Red rolled their eyes. “Fine. You know what? We’ll do it the hard way.” Before Blue could move Red had them tied to their chair. “There. Much better.”_

_Blue made a surprised sound and tried to escape. “Um… This is um… You know, I should have known you were into some weird bondage shit. You look like the kind of guy that would be and- Wait! Where are you going?!”_

_“I’m going to find a funnel.” Said Red. “Can’t force feed you without a funnel.”_

_“Hey! You can’t do that!”_

_“Fucking watch me. If I can’t find a funnel I’m getting my knife and we’re going to bypass your mouth and go straight to your stomach.”_

_“... THIS IS WHY NO ONE LIKES YOU!”_

***

“Asshole!” Snapped Lance. “You’re going to cut my stomach open? Coran? Little help?”

Coran just chuckled. “Well Lance you have to make a successful saving throw by the time Keith comes back with either a funnel or a knife. Make a dexterity saving throw.”

Lance quickly rolled his dice. “... So I’m still stuck to the chair…”

Coran nodded and turned his attention back to Keith. “Okay Keith. You’re in the kitchen. Make an investigation check. What are you looking for? The funnel or the knife?”

Keith thought for a moment. “Um… I’ll look for the knife.” He quickly rolled. “... Wow I got a five.”

Pride frowned and looked over at his notes. “That doesn’t sound right. Did you remember to add your modifier?”

“I got a concussion and my next five investigations are at a disadvantage, remember?”

“Oh yeah. My bad. Carry on you guys.”

Coran hummed a little and checked his notes. “Let’s see… Okay Keith you don’t find the knife but you find a plastic spork.”

“Okay, I’m keeping that.”

Corna gave him a confused look but waved it off and looked back over at Lance. “Dexterity?”

He quickly rolled again. “... Eight?”

“You’re still stuck in the chair.”

“Damn it… Wait, is my torso just tied to the chair? Not my legs?” Asked Lance.

“No… What’s your plan?” Asked Coran. Lance quickly whispered his plan to him and Coran chuckled. “Okay, I will allow it, but only if you fail the last dexterity check and only if you roll high enough. Also, nothing too graphic.” This got everyone intrigued, but Coran and Lance weren’t saying anything. “Keith, want to look for the funnel now?” 

“Sure.” Keith rolled the die. “... 17?”

“Congratulations Keith. Red found the funnel in the dishwasher.” Coran looked over at Lance. “Last chance Lance.”

Lance rolled the die and rolled a natural 1. Everyone cringed slightly, but Lance and Coran smirked and Lance quickly rolled his die twice. “Okay, 26 for performance and… 18 for strength.”

Coran laughed. “Excellent. Okay Keith. Now that Red is walking towards the table where Blue is still tied to the chair. Remember, Lance rolled a very high performance check.”

Keith rolled his eyes a little. “Fine…”

“Ok and Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Make a quick intelligence check?”

Keith quickly rolled. “2?”

“Okay, this is going to get interesting…” All the other players were both excited and terrified to see where this was going to go.

***

_Red walked back over to Blue and held the funnel up to his face. “Alright Blue. Open your fucking mouth.”_

_Blue pouted and squirmed a little more. “Come on Red, this isn’t funny anymore. Let me go. Please? You know I can make worth your while.”_

_“... I’m listening.” Red put the funnel down on the table and stared down at Blue, amused as to what he was going to do or say._

_Blue smiled sweetly up at him and batted his eyelashes at him. “I think we both know something a lot more fun you can shove down my throat other than a funnel.” A light blush dusted his cheeks as he seductively licked his lips. “And I promise at the end of it I will swallow every single drop.” _

_Red’s face matched his name as he stared in stunned silence Blue. Was he seriously saying he was going to suck his dick if he would let him go? And he was going to swallow? That was… He looked so serious and those soft lips… “I um… Er…”_

_“PSYCH!” Blue suddenly pushed back as hard as they could and their chair glided across the floor, out the door and down the hall. “LATER RED! SEE YOU ON THE TRAINING DECK!”_

_Red stood there in shock as he tried to understand what just happened. Did Blue really do that just to fuck with him? He suddenly got very angry and charged after him with the funnel. “GET BACK HERE ASSHOLE! YOU HAVEN’T FUCKING EATEN YET!”_

***

Pidge and Hunk were laughing pretty loudly. Another one of Lance’s schemes paid off spectacularly. Much better than the time a con woman had him handcuffed to a tree and she almost stole his lion. Lance blamed the dice for his bad roll that day.

The session quickly finished and everyone went home. Keith once again got a ride home with Shiro once everyone else was picked up. Once they were alone Shiro started talking about school and Keith in general.

“So how are you going getting back into the swing of things?”

“I think I’m doing okay. Teachers aren’t singling me out and none of the kids are taunting me or anything, so that’s good.”

“Well that’s good. I’m glad things are going well for you.”

“Thanks.” He smiled a little. He was happy that he was making Shiro happy. Shiro dropped him off home and Keith went back inside. Krolia was in the kitchen again. “Hey mum.”

She smiled at him. “Hey Keith. How was school?”

“School was good.”

“That’s good. Do you have any homework today?”

“No.”

She seemed surprised to hear that. “Oh?”

“Yeah. I think I might go for a walk or something?”

His mother seemed to freeze for a moment. “... You want to go for a walk?”

“Yeah?”

She sighed a little and made a disapproving sound. “Okay, but there are going to be a few rules. You can’t take any money with you.”

“What?”

“No money. Phone at full volume. Do not put it on silent.” She said. “And just so you know if you do not answer your phone when I call you I will call the cops.”

“What? Why? What the hell mum?”

“I don’t want you to be alone!” She snapped, but not out of anger. She looked kind of scared. “I’m on call tonight so I could leave at any moment… I want to make sure you’re safe…”

“... I’ll call you when I’m walking back, okay?”

“... Okay.”

***

Without really much thought or direction Keith just wandered around suburbia. Nothing but houses, houses, and more houses. Occasionally there would be some children’s park with a few swings and a slide. Maybe some climbing equipment, but that was about it. The place he lived was pretty nice.

Eventually he ended up standing at the entrance of a forest that bordered one side of the town. He stood there for a moment and felt a slight chill race down his spine. He didn’t really go into the forest. He didn’t feel a need to, but right now… Despite the sense of foreboding he was almost felt compelled to just go in.

So he followed his feet and walked down one of the trails. It only took a minute before the sounds of the outside world had been muffled out and replaced with the quiet sounds of nature. It was calming. Peaceful. Yet somber.

After a few minutes of enjoying the quiet he happened to hear something off in the distance. It sounded fuzzy and kind of static. He ended up walking off the track a little and headed towards some old giant tree. The sound was coming from the tree. Well not from the tree but somewhere around the base of it.

He slowly walked around the tree until he reached a huge hole over the otherside of the tree. The tried was still damp and kind of loose too. Something had been recently moved if the drag marks meant anything.

The sound was still coming from the middle of the hole. Without much consideration for his own safety, Keith jumped into the hole and looked around for the source of the noise. He sifted through the soft dirt until he found the source. Some old hand held radio… Alright.

He fiddled with it a little until the static was gone and he was tuning into different stations. Keith didn’t really know why he was doing this. Just checking to see if it would work, probably. It had to be picking up something if it still worked. Eventually he tuned into something kind of strange. It sounded like rhythmic beeping. He didn’t really understand what that was so he kept fiddling with the dials until he found something unnervingly familiar.

It was a station where two people were just quietly talking to each other. Obviously not that weird since talk back radio was a thing. But it was the language that was being spoken. It was the same weird language that he had heard before in the car with Shiro.

_“Tnsoad oh ovih o dnab htuw oht kcilb nudilip? Yhw sa oh yltnitsnac nmird at oht oulb ono?”_

_“Oht nIlp Tnsood ognihc. Tsej osu suht diotsnu. Ow doon at wank wah pood ruoht dnab sner.”_

_“Ad ow ovih omut?”_

_“Tu lluw ob htarw tu fu ow nic tog oht nautimrafnu ow doon. Ekim muh tcirotnu htuw oht oelb nudilia oarm.”_

_“Daatsrodne.”_

“Isn’t that hole a little big?” Asked a familiar voice. Keith jumped out of his skin and quickly looked up to see Lance smiling down at him. “You went too wide. You need to go way deeper if you need to go six feet under.”

Keith glared at him. “Shut up Lance. The fuck are you doing here?”

He rolled his eyes and sat on the edge of the hole, lazily swinging his legs. “Relax Keith. My house backs onto the forest. The hanging tree is like a ten minute walk away from my place.”

“... Hanging tree?”

Lance nodded and pointed up at the giant tree. “The hanging tree. It used to be really far away from the town and the branches were strong enough to hold several bodies at a time. No need to build any gallows. And then when the heads rotted off they would fall and the animals would drag them away. We learnt about it when we were looking at the town’s local history.”

“... Who hanged here?”

Lance shrugged and tilted his head back. “Usual suspects; runaway slaves, criminals, murder victims, suicides… That’s part of the reason they finally took away the huge ass rock that used to be here. Made it too easy for people to climb up and set up nooses. Still won’t stop people from doing it. They will just do it with another tree.” 

“I guess…” Keith climbed out of the hole and sat next to Lance. “... Did I try to kill myself here?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh…” He didn’t expect Lance to be so blunt, but he should have expected that. “Did I leave a suicide note? Anything?”

Lance shrugged. “No one ever found anything. You either hid it really well or you just didn’t feel the need to write one. Didn’t feel like you had to explain yourself or justify your actions I guess?”

“I guess…” What did that say about him that he didn’t even want to give everyone an explanation as to why he was dead? He was kind of an asshole. “Did I come here a lot? Like in the week before I tried?”

Surprisingly Lance gave him a straight answer. “Yeah. We started hanging out a lot more outside of school when you realized how close I lived to the hanging tree… Heh… I guess you kind of used me huh? Just got close to me so you could get easy access to the place you wanted to die?”

“... I’m sorry Lance.” He said quietly. “I didn’t… I don’t remember that… If I did I… That was a really shitty thing to do…”

“Yeah, it was… I actually thought we were becoming friends…”

Keith felt bad. He was a really shitty person. “I’m sorry Lance… Is this why you’re so angry at me? Because I used you to try and kill myself?”

“Kind of…”

“... Were you the one that found me?”

Lance didn’t have to say anything. His silence screamed volumes. Keith had befriended Lance days before he tried to kill himself just so he could get access to the hanging tree without anyone realizing what he was doing. Then Lance had to find his body. He probably cut him down too and tried to save him while calling for help. At least that’s what he felt happened. It made logical sense to him.

“I’m sorry Lance. I’m a shitty person… I can understand why you’re so pissed off at me. I used you.” He sighed sadly. “I’m sorry Lance. I have no idea why I… I’m a really shitty person. Sorry.”

After a few seconds of silence Lance just barked out a laugh and lightly punched his arm. “Nah, it’s fine dude. I have literally seen worse shit than some numb nuts hanging themselves. Ever seen a live rabbit getting ripped in half by two foxes? That shit is way more fucked up then you stretching your neck out.”

“... Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry… I’m just glad you’re still alive.” He sighed a little and dug his heels into the side of the hole. “You know… During that week we would spend our nights out here by the rock just stargazing and talking.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Keith looked up at the sky. It was no longer blue but the usual array or reds, pinks, and purples that indicated dusk. He needed to call his mum soon so she didn’t freak out and call the cops on him. “Sky’s pretty nice tonight. It feels like forever since I’ve seen a night sky.”

“Really?” Asked Lance. “Huh, guess you’re usually inside by the time the stars come out huh?”

“Yeah… I should call my mum and start walking home.” He stood up and dusted his jeans off.

Lance stood up with him. “Let me walk you home.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. It’s no big deal. Plus Mrs K will feel better knowing that someone else was with you and making sure you didn’t off yourself. Right?”

“Right…” Keith ended up calling his mum and let her know that Lance was walking him home. She was relieved since she was about to call him and tell him to come home. Lance loudly told Keith to tell her that he said hi. Once the phone call was over he put the phone away and glared at him. “You didn’t have to yell at me… Don’t you have to call your parents?”

Lance shrugged. “They won’t notice I’m gone until dinner time. Even then no one will give a shit. I stopped showing up to dinner altogether a year ago. Besides it’s disgusting the amount of food everyone expects me to eat. I’m fucking banned from going to the bathroom during and after dinner for twenty minutes when I eat with them after I’ve finished eating. It’s a bulshit rule.”

“... Dude, you’re bulimic. They want you to eat so you don’t die?”

“Do you want to walk home alone?”

Keith sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, okay. I’m dropping it.”

“That’s what I thought.”

When they got back to Keith’s house his mum was sitting on the front steps. She instantly stood up when she saw the two boys and sighed in relief. “Keith. You’re finally back. How are you Lance? It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other.”

Lance just grinned and winked at her. “Hey, long time no see Mrs K. Still as young looking as ever. I swear you just look like Keith’s nicer, cooler, older sister.”

The older woman just rolled her eyes and smiled fondly at him while Keith punched his arm. “Stop hitting on my mum!”

Lance just laughed and rubbed his arm. “I’m just messing around Keef. Catch you around school tomorrow.” He quickly waved at them and quickly headed back down the street.

His mum just shook her head and ushered Keith back inside. “Okay Keith, let’s get you back inside. What have you got there anyway?”

“Hmm?”

“That thing in your hands. Is that a broken radio?”

Keith looked down at the radio in his hands. He was surprised to say the least, it looked completely mangled. The case was cracked, the speaker was popped out and one of the knobs to change the frequency was missing. It was completely broken. No way it was the one he heard working before. This was really weird. 

“I um… I just found it? Thought I could fix it?” What else could he say at this point?

She nodded and patted his back. “Okay. Put it in your room and go wash your hands. Dinner is ready.”

Keith nodded and walked up to his room and put the radio on his desk. He was sure that it was working. He had heard it loud and clear blaring static. He heard weird tapping and that strange language playing on it. Maybe it just fell apart in his hands when he was walking home with them? He’d figure this out later.


	4. Off kilter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things start to get a little weird. Kudos and comment when you can. I would really appreciate the feed back. Enjoy :D

_The inhabitants of the planet happily cheered for the paladins. They had just saved a planet of aliens of extremely fluffy round alien creatures from the Galra. They were grateful and throwing the Paladin’s a huge party. It wasn’t anything new. This pretty much happened whenever they saved a planet from the Galra._

_Black and the Princess were doing more of the diplomatic things while Yellow, Green, Blue, and Red just went and socialized with the inhabitants and just enjoyed the party. Yellow as talking food with the caterers and some of the local chefs that were there. Green was deep in technobabble talk with one of the fluffy aliens that had helped them on their mission. Blue was just flirting with everyone that came in contact with him. Red was… Red had found a quiet place to hide away by himself._

_It was just a small balcony where he could stand alone and watch the twin moons that circled the planet. The solitude made him sigh. But he had no idea if it was in relief or disappointment. He didn’t like parties, but he liked being around the other paladins. He doubted that any of them would be looking for him. _

_Suddenly Blue was but his side with two fancy space drinks in his hands. “Hey there Red. You want a fancy space drink? I think it’s like wine, but more tropical and stuff?”_

_Red sighed and took the drink from Blue. “Thanks… Don’t you want to go back to the party and chase that tail?”_

_Blue just laughed. “Yeah, but you know I like hanging out with you more than other aliens. You’re my favourite alien here.”_

_“I’m half alien.”_

_“You’re still my favourite.” Blue leaned against the railing and up at the twin moons. “... I miss earth…”_

_“... I’ll get you back there soon.” Said Red. “I’ll make sure you all make it home once we defeat Zarkon.” He drank some of the weird alien drink Blue got him. Tasted like tropical fruit punch._

_“You know, you don’t have to keep saying you will get us home. You have your family to get home to as well. You found your space mum after all.”_

_“I guess…”_

_“... Does that mean you will leave earth and stay with the Blade when the war is over?”_

_“Honestly? I don’t know. I guess… When we get back to Earth, everyone has someone… I know I am close to Black, but he has someone he loves that he wants to get back to more than anything… I kind of just ended up on this whole adventure for the ride anyway.”_

_“That’s not true Red…” Blue reached over and lightly touched Red’s hand, smiling softly at him. “You are our family. Voltron is our family. It just isn’t the same without you…”_

_Red looked down at Blue’s hand for a moment and then at his face. “I’m sorry Blue, but Voltron isn’t a family. Not really… I am sorry.”_

_Blue seemed sad but to his credit he smiled and shrugged it off. “It’s fine. I get it. You don’t have to say sorry.”_

***

Keith was drawn out of his day dream when the bell rang. Whenever he wasn’t focusing on anything he ended up thinking back to the game. Apparently it really had an affect on him in a positive way? Maybe there was something to Allura’s thesis after all.

It was a good bit of escapism. He kind of needed that after everything he had been through and discovered. He still felt shit about using Lance to kill himself. Fuck, he still didn’t know why he did it. He just didn’t feel like there was any reason to. Something was missing. He was missing a very important puzzle piece that would definitely help unlock whatever part of his memories that his mind had chosen to forget. 

Unless he had actually managed to kill the brain cells in his brain that stored his short term memory. That would suck so badly. Then again if mild brain damage was the worst he got out of everything then that wasn’t so bad.

He packed up his things and walked out of class. It was lunch time now and he want back to the empty classroom to eat alone. He had attempted to go into the cafeteria once but it was just too hot in there and he wanted to take off the stupid turtleneck. He didn’t want to do that in front of people. The bruises on his neck were still painfully visible.

So he sat quietly alone in the room and ate some soup. He still couldn’t eat solids. How long would it be until he could eat toast or bread in general? Did he really fuck his neck up that badly? This sucked.

The door to the classroom opened and Keith didn’t even have to look up to know that it was Lance. He nodded in Lance’s direction and Lance nodded back. He opened up a window and leaned out it slightly. 

Keith paused from eating and looked over at him. “Hey… Can we talk?”

“What’s there to talk about?” Asked Lance. He took some mints out of his pocket and quickly popped them into his mouth. “Look, I was mad at you before but now that I’ve yelled at you for being a piece of shit, I’m over it. I just gotta move on. No reason to stay mad, right?”

“Right… I’m still sorry. I can’t remember anything that happened during that week… I don’t know why I acted the way I did I just… I don’t even know why I tried to kill myself. I didn’t have a reason, did I?”

Lance just shrugged. “Who knows? You probably just decided you were done with it and just wanted to end it all? No one really knows what is going on in your brain. I mean, you have a decent home life and no one fucked with you at school. You probably have depression or something.”

“I guess… But you know, wouldn’t I like, be in a hospital or a psych ward? Why was I sent home so early if I’m so fucked up in the head?”

Lance kind of just froze when he said that. “I… I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I’m not your parents. Your parents are the ones that decided that stuff for you.”

“I guess… Can we still be friends?” Asked Keith quietly. “Like I understand if you don’t. I did a really shitty thing to you…”

Lance just laughed. “I already told you I’m over it. So get over it already.” He took a pudding cup out of his pocket and put it in front of Keith. “Here. You like strawberry right? It’s a strawberry pudding cup. Eat it.”

Keith sighed a little and took it. Once again all the nutrition information was blacked out. He really should tell Lance to eat it, but he knew Lance wouldn’t. He’d just get mad, flip a table, yell at him, and storm off. 

So he just smiled at Lance and took it. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Lance nodded and sat down on the teacher’s desk. Keith took a moment to just stare at him. Were Lance’s clothes always so baggy and loose? He looked like he was layering up but not really succeeding in bulking himself out, if that's what he was planning to do.

“What are you staring at?” Asked Lance.

“Oh um… Are you cold? You’re wearing a lot of layers…”

Lance seemed a little surprised and blushed a little. “I um… Maybe a little. My circulation is fucking shit. Cold hands and cold feet. Winter fucking sucks.”

“Yeah um… Wow… Um, don’t take this the wrong way but that sounds like a health thing…”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Yeah well, you should probably be in a neck brace so fuck off.”

Keith just rolled his eyes and finished his soup.

***

After Keith had finished eating he made his way to his locker. It was in one of the more quiet parts of the school where there were hardly any students. That was fine with him. He didn’t like being around other people that much anyway. He just tuned them out anyway.

But there was a small flash of green among the sea of people that made him take pause. It was Pidge. They were standing next to some lockers by themselves with their arms crossed as they tried to make themselves as small as possible. Everyone was ignoring them, but Keith just knew there was something wrong with Pidge. They quickly walked over to them.

“Pidge? Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Pidge sniffled a little and shook their head. “N-no. Everything is just… It’s all fucking wrong Keith… Everything is just so fucking wrong. It makes me want to puke.”

Keith wasn’t really sure what to do. Pidge kind of looked like they were having a panic attack or something. Why was Pidge acting like this? It must have been because someone had said something about their appearance. He wouldn’t put it past someone to yell at Pidge for using the girl’s bathroom again, or maybe some boys yelled at them for using the boy’s bathroom? Pidge just couldn’t win.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” He asked. “I can go with you, make sure no one is in there to say shit. I don’t give a fuck which one you want to use. I’ll still kick them all out and guard the door.”

“... Thanks.” They sniffled a little and wiped their eyes. “Boy’s bathroom… Please.”

Keith nodded and quickly lead Pidge to the closest bathroom and quickly checked to make sure no one else was in there. It was empty. Good. He let Pidge in and quickly flipped the lock shut. Not really knowing what to do Keith kind of just paced around the bathroom. It reminded him why he never stayed in there for longer than he needed to.

“Everything today is just so fucked up…” Whimpered Pidge. 

“Um… Do you want to elaborate?” Asked Keith. He was so not the person to deal with this. Where were Hunk and Lance? They would be so much better than him at this.

Pidge just laughed a little from the safety of the stall. “You mean you haven’t noticed yet? There’s something really fucking wrong going on here. It isn’t just me. It’s everyone; Hunk, Lance, Shiro, Coran, Allura… Even you… It’s all so fucked up. We all know this isn’t right but we don’t want to talk about it! No one ever wants to talk about it!” They punched the side of the stall making it rattle. “It’s so fucking fucked! Why haven’t you noticed it?”

Their aggression made Keith jump a little. He didn’t understand what they were talking about. “Pidge… I’m sorry… Did things change because I tried to kill myself? N-not that I’m trying to make this about me, I just want to know when things changed… That’s all…”

“... You need to ask for your stuff back.”

“I what?”

“Ask for your stuff back.” Pidge sniffled and started to sob. “Th-the day you did it… You gave us things… You gave us things you thought were important to you.”

“I-”

“That’s a big fucking sign Keith!” Snapped Pidge. “It’s a huge fucking red flag but no one picked up on it! We thought you were getting better! You were smiling more! You were getting closer to Lance! You gave us stuff because you said you were getting better and feeling better and wanted to show us how much you appreciated us being there for you! Shiro was a little uneasy about it, but even he wasn’t sure if you were going to… Then you did and you almost gave Lance a fucking heart attack!”

All Keith could do was stare at the stall door as his guilt filled him. Here he was just assuming he was fucking with Lance, but in reality he really fucked with everyone else’s heads. He knew Pidge probably didn’t mean to make him feel guilty, but they needed to vent to him all of their feelings and frustrations. It was okay. He understood. He fucked up really badly.

“I’m sorry Pidge… You guys deserve better… I’m a shitty friend.”

“Yeah, you are… But we were shitty too. We didn’t see the signs…”

“To be fair we all have our own shit to deal with. I couldn’t blame any of you for not noticing what I’m going through when you’re all struggling with your own shit, and high school on top of that.”

Pidge laughed at that. Which made Keith smile a little. The toilet flushed and Pidge walked out to wash their hands. “... Can you take me to the nurse’s office? I feel kind of sick.”

“Sure.”

They nodded a little and took something out of their pocket and pressed it into Keith’s hand. “Here… This is what you gave me before you… It belongs to you. I was just keeping it warm for you.”

“Oh, thanks?” He looked down at what they had given him. It was a small metallic sword. The kind of one a person would put on a keychain. It was from a TV show. Some cheesy action cartoon he would watch on Saturday mornings. It was a show that Pidge apparently also liked.

When they got to the nurses office she wasn’t there. So they just walked in and Pidge flopped onto one of the beds. They kicked their shoes off and sighed. “This sucks… Everything just sucks…”

“I know Pidge.”

“I just… Can you do me a favour Keith?”

“Yeah, sure.”

They looked over at Keith and smiled weakly. “Keep your eyes and ears opened. This town. The people… Everything is so fucked up. It;s so fucked up and no one is seeing it and Keith you should know! You should know but-”

The nurse suddenly walked in and quickly ushered Keith out. He almost tripped over his feet when he did so. Damn pushy nurse. He glared back at them when they closed the door. Asshole.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and begrudgingly made his way down the eerily quiet hallways to his locker. He quickly put in the code; 23, 1, 11, 5, 21, 16. He felt that the code was kind of long for a combination lock, but it was what it was.

The second he opened it a hand slammed it shut making hims jump. “Hey there mullet.”

“Lance? What the actual fuck?”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Come on mullet. Let’s get out of here.”

“I have a class to get to.”

“Well so do I, but do you really want to go to gym class?” Asked Lance. “Seriously, fuck that. Follow me.”

“Lance…”

“What? Too good to hand out with me mullet?”

Keith sighed and looked at Lance with annoyance. “Where are we going?”

“Thought you would never ask.” Lance flashed him a charming grin. “Follow me and keep your head down.” 

Keith just shook his head and followed Lance up several flights of steps they got to an empty classroom. Inside Hunk was sitting at a table. He briefly looked up at them and smiled. “Hey guys. You skipping class too, Keith?”

“I guess. Lance kind of dragged me here. What are you skipping out on?”

Hunk had a very defeated look on his face. “Home economics…”

“I thought you liked cooking?”

“Well I do, but you know…” Hunk started to tap his pen on the table in a rhythmic fashion. “Some people are just jerks… Easier just to avoid them. Where’s Pidge?”

“They were sick and I took them to the nurses office.” Said Keith.

“Were they okay?” Asked Hunk as he started tapping his pen faster. “Did something happen to them?”

Lance sighed. “Look, I’m gonna be honest here Hunk, It’s been about a month since the last time Pidge was visiting the nurse. They kind of lose their fucking mind whenever their biology fights against them.” Hunk cringed a little but said no more. Keith was just confused, so Lance decided to crudely elaborate. “Pidge is on their period. They freak the fuck out every time they leak a drop of blood and cramp up. Seriously, Pidge is smart but they really need to remember to down some pain killers and put a pad in their panty lining to avoid some of the dysphoria.”

“... Does that actually work?” Asked Keith.

Lance shrugged. “Not a clue. I’m no authority on gender dysphoria. I’m literally just running my mouth as I do.”

“Oh, okay…” Keith leaned against the desk and sighed a little as he crossed his arms against his chest. “Um… Pidge said I gave you all something and they said I should ask for it all back. Pidge already gave me back this little key chain thing.”

“Oh, sure buddy.” Hunk looked through his pencil case and took out a mechanical pencil that had a few plastic stars hanging off it. “Here… I kind of wanted to give it back to you earlier but there just didn’t seem to be a right time, you know?”

Keith smiled a little and took it back. It was a souvenir for the Garrison Observatory. That place was… A little out of town. He went there with his parents when he was younger. It was fun, it was a good day. Sure he was like five and wanted to look through the telescope during the day, but it was still fun.

“Thanks Hunk.” He looked over at Lance. “So… You gonna give it back?”

Lance just shrugged. “Can’t right now. It’s at home. Either come to my place after school or like, I’ll give it to you when I give it to you.”

“Oh, okay…” Keith just sat on the desk and tuned everything out as he looked at the mechanical pencil and the keychain. He felt bad about giving these things to them because of what it meant, but at the same time he was happy that they looked after what he had given them at least.


	5. Choker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe this chapter will be a little lighter than the last one? idk, it's all pretty dark. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

Keith found himself wandering the town again. Again he found himself at the forest. By the hanging tree. He sat on the edge of the hole and kicked his heels against the dirt. He didn’t really know why he came here again. He wanted to go to Lance’s place but just couldn’t bring himself to do so.

He still felt weird about this. It shouldn’t be so hard to go over to Lance’s house to get back what he had given him. It was probably just some sentimental junk anyway. After Lance found him he probably threw whatever he gave him away or something. Not that he could blame him. He probably would have done the same thing.

What was he even going here? Actually now that he thought about it, how did he even get here? Wasn’t he just in class with Lance and Hunk? Yeah, he really needed to see a doctor about his memory problems. If this was all a side effect of being dead for a few minutes then maybe there wasn’t anything he could do about it. That would suck.

As he brooded over this Lance happened to sit down next to him. “Hi.”

“Hi… What are you doing here?”

Lance shrugged. “Let’s see, it’s a ten minute walk here from my place, it’s quiet here, my family doesn’t follow me out here, and this is one of the few places I can purge without people judging me.”

“Oh… Makes sense I guess… Did you ever think about… You know…”

“Killing myself?” Questioned Lance. “Yeah. Once… But like, seeing you kicking around like a dead fish was kind of sobering.”

“Alright.” At least something good came out of his bullshit. “I um… So I found a radio here last time. Know where it came from?”

Lance shrugged. “No real way of knowing. For a little while after you hung yourself and shit people came by and dropped off some flowers… I fucking hated it.”

“Huh?”

Lance huffed and rolled his eyes. “None of those fuckers knew you. They were just a bunch of assholes that came up here to feel better about themselves. Put some flowers where the suicidal kid tried to off themselves and try to talk about how important mental health is while doing fucking nothing. So many people talking about how they should have seen the signs and how they knew you. No one fucking knew you. No one did… Fuck, your parents were really touched that you apparently were friends with like half the school. Fucking bullshit. You were only close with me, Pidge, Hunk, Allura, Coran, and Shiro. We were the only ones that talked to you. We were the only ones that deserved to talk about you… Everyone else just wanted to use your death to boost themselves up.”

“Shit… Sorry man…” Keith had experienced the same thing. All the fake smiles and half assed condolences when he dad died in that… Injured. He was injured in the fire. Not killed. Injured. Badly burnt. He ended up living with some of his mum’s friends because she was in the air force overseas… He was passed between uncle Kolivan and uncle Antok for a few months while his dad was in the ICU, and then the burn ward… Yes. That was right.

“It’s no big deal.” Said Lance. “Every day for like a week I came up here and got rid of all the bullshit flowers and cards that those fame vultures put up here. I burnt them all.”

“That sounds a little extreme…”

“You telling me you really want people faking their sadness over you?” Asked Lance with disgust in his voice. “Do you want that kind of attention from things like that?”

“What? No. I just think arson might be going overboard… I’m glad you did that. I don’t want people to use me like that.”

“Good… Anything that your actual friends and family left behind I didn’t destroy.”

“Cool… So um… About the thing I gave you?”

Lance froze for a second before he laughed. “Yeah, well it’s kind of hard to give it back to you…”

“Why?”

Lance smiled sadly at him. “It was kind of a one time deal thing… But I guess I can try…” He quickly leaned over and kissed Keith’s cheek.

“...” Keith went bright red and made some inhuman screeching sound. What the absolute fuck was that? Why did Lance kiss him? Why the fuck did that happen? What happened between him and Lance that would make him do that? 

Lance just laughed and stood up. He dusted off his pants. “I’m just messing with you. Sorry dude I just needed to see your face if I kissed you.”

Keith just blinked at him in confusion. “... You kissed me just to see my reaction? What the fuck man?”

He just laughed and started walking towards his house. “Come on man. You told us you were gay and it’s not like I shoved my tongue down your throat or anything fucked up like that. Come on. Just follow me to my place. I’ll give you the thing.”

“... Okay.” Keith got up and followed Lance to his house. For someone that said he lived with four other siblings and his parents the house was kind of quiet. “Where is everyone?”

“Siblings are out doing their own shit.” Said Lance. “Pop-pop’s at work. Mama’s probably grocery shopping or some shit. Doesn’t matter. No one will be home for a while. Just come to my room you dumb fuck.”

Keith rolled his eyes and followed Lance to his room. The walls were painted into a washed out blue colour… In fact everything just looked washed out and dull. It was kind of really depressing. He watched Lance go through his drawer at his desk before he triumphantly pulled out a thin piece of black silk with clasps at either end. 

“Here it is. Your old choker. Guess it wasn’t tight enough for you before huh?”

Keith rolled his eyes and took it off him. This was… He didn’t remember giving Lance this. It didn’t look like something he would wear at all or even own as a joke. “Really?”

Lance shrugged. “You were going through some kind of transitional goth and emo phase. Don’t ask me. You just gave it to me and that was that. I didn’t ask too many questions.”

“Oh, okay.” He turned it over in his hands a few times before he put it on. It felt kind of weird wearing it but here he was. Wearing a choker. “How does it look?”

“... It would look better if you weren’t wearing that stupid turtleneck.”

“I guess…”

“Yeah. You should go now Keith. Your mum and dad will probably be freaking out about you vanishing again… And my parents aren’t too happy about us crazy kids having people over uninvited.”

“Oh… Okay… Guess I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

Lance shrugged and ushered him towards the front door. “Guess you will. Just get going mullet. We both probably have homework to do.”

“Okay. Bye I guess?” Keith walked out of Lance’s house and headed in the direction of his home. As he walked he lightly tugged at the collar of his turtleneck. The choker didn’t seem right. He didn’t think he wore these before. It just didn’t seem right. It just didn’t seem like his style.

A car pulled up next to him as he was walking and the window rolled down. It was Shiro. “Hey Keith, what are you doing out so late?”

“Walking. You?”

“Grocery shopping. Want a lift?”

“... Yeah.” Keith got in and silently sat in the car as Shiro drove. He quietly sat there while but continued to tug at the collar of the turtleneck. “Hey, Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“Did I used to wear chokers?”

“Oh?” Shrio thought for a moment. “Yeah. For a little while. Not for too long though. Why do you ask?”

“... Have I always had a bad memory?”

“No. Why?”

“I don’t remember walking to the forest.”

“Oh…” Shiro thought for a moment. “That sounds like something you should talk to your mum about. Maybe you suffered some brain damage when you… Well… you know.”

“When I killed myself.” Said Keith. “You don’t have to skirt around the issue. I’m not going to relapse if I don’t even remember why I tried to do it in the first place.”

“Well, I guess that’s true…” Shiro tried to sound confident, but he obviously was unsure about how to handle the situation.”

“Is Pidge okay?” Asked Keith.

“Pidge?”

“Yeah. They were in a really, really bad place today. I had to take them to the nurses office…” 

Shrio sighed a little. “Yeah. Pidge is fine. The nurse gave them some painkillers and we talked for a bit about all the usual stuff… And since I didn’t have to see anyone else for the rest of the day I just let Pidge do some coding in my office till it was time to head home. You have any idea what they are coding? I was thinking that maybe it’s a game, or a website, but their lips are sealed.”

Keith shook his head. He didn’t even know that Pidge was coding. Sure they always had their head in their phone or their laptop but he never really thought about what they did. Maybe he could ask them the next time he saw them? But he didn’t want to offend Pidge. He could probably ask Hunk or Lance if they knew.

When they got back to Shiro’s place Keith helped the older man take his bags inside before he headed home. His mum was on the couch watching TV, but her head was stuck in her phone with a worried look on her face. 

“... Hey mum.”

She looked up at him and relaxed. “Keith, you’re back. I was just about to text you. Where did you go?”

“I walked to Lance’s place.” Not a complete lie. He did end up going to see Lance.

“Ah, okay. Did you two hang out for a bit?”

“Yeah… And when I walked home Shiro saw me and decided to give me a lift back.”

“I hope you thanked him.”

“I did,”

“That’s good. Dinner will be ready soon. Do you want to watch some TV until then?”

Keith shrugged. “I’m just going to go to my room to like, go and do some homework… Okay?”

“Okay.”

He smiled a little at her and went back to his room. He sat at his desk and took out some books. He looked over at the broken radio he had previously brought in and started to fiddle with that instead. It was battery operated and the batteries looked fresh, so it was probably a wiring issue.

He carefully pressed a few wires against the metal bits that they had wiggled loose from. The radio sparked to life again and a very staticy sound started making all kinds of garbled sounds. Keith played with the one working knob on the radio to see if he could hear anything. After a few seconds the sound became clare and he could hear the weird language again, but it was a quiet whisper.

_“Wah hcam rognal ora ow gniag at doon at ad suht? A wank suh nuirb su tnoroffud at tiht fa i Irlig, twb wah gnal soad tu okit at tcirtxo nautimrafnu marf muh?”_

_“Ocnoutip. Ow doon at pook muh yltsam ducilp.”_

_“Lla suht gnutrits dni gnuppats su sealucudur.”_

_“Llow A tnic ploh tu fu ow tog oht tsam tnotsusnac miorts fa nautimrafnu gnurud oht ssorts sdaurop. Ocna ow nic oreguf tua oht tcufrop ocnilib teahuiw gnulluk muh ow tnaw doon at trits dni pats.”_

_“Llits gnuyanni.”_

_“U wank.”_

Keith scribbled down as much of the weird words he could decypher. He’d try and type them out into some translator later to see if he could come up with anything. Knowing his luck he probably managed to tap into someone having some weird coded conversation with someone. Probably two old people across town or something? That sounded plausible, right?

He heard a knock at his door. “Keith? Dinner is ready.”

“Okay. Coming.” Keith put the radio down and walked down to the dining room. He was surprised to see his dad there. “Dad? I thought you were doing night shifts this week?”

The older man shrugged. “Not every day this week. I switched a few shifts with a friend of mine so I’d be able to spend evenings with my family.”

“And we appreciate it.” Cooed his mother as she walked past and kissed his cheek. “Now you might finally have some time to fix the guttering like you said you would last winter. And here I was thinking you were all about that fire safety.” The older man laughed and kissed her. 

Keith just rolled his eyes and ate his food. He wasn’t too sure what it was that his mum cooked but it was soft, mushy, and easy on his throat.

***

_Red stirred the weird looking alien goop in his bowl. There were a bunch or weird purple lumps of stuff in the goo that Yellow said were meat, but Red was skeptical. It was kind of gross and gummy. Worst part was that it tasted kind of like beef stew. When was the last time he had beef stew? He couldn’t remember._

_Yellow, Green, and Black and finished eating a long time ago so it was just him at the table with Blue. Blue was just lazy and didn’t really feel like eating. He’d whined about wanting to go to bed instead of eating, but Black told he couldn’t go to bed until he ate._

_So Blue’s head was firmly placed against the table while Red just stared at him. “... Are you still awake Blue?”_

_“Yeah…”_

_“Really?”_

_“No. Fuck off Red I’m tired… I don’t remember the last time I had a goodnight’s sleep…”_

_“Just eat and you can go to bed… What the hell is this even?”_

_“Some edible stuff Yellow found.” Muttered Blue. He slowly pushed himself up and ate some of the food. “... Why does this purple stuff feel like I’m trying to eat chewed up bubble gum?”_

_“No clue.” Red picked up a chunk of the purple stuff and tried to see if he could pull it apart like gum. He could. This alien food was fucking gross. “Soooo…”_

_“So?”_

_“... A while ago you kind of talked about a suicide pact… You didn’t really specify anything then. Want to elaborate now?”_

_“Not really. I just wanna go to bed.”_

_“Blue…”_

_Blue sighed dramatically. “Okay. Fine. If you must know I figured it would be the easiest way to stop you doing something dumb. Like, if you die but end up saving everyone more power to you, but if you die and then I die, that’s just on your head and junk. So like, I just figured the best way to stop you from doing something stupid would be to do something equally stupid.”_

_“... That’s just dumb.”_

_“Worked out so far. We’re both alive.”_

_“That’s besides the point.”_

_Blue shrugged and stood up stretching. “Whatever. I’m gonna go to bed. Night Red. Don’t do something stupid while I’m sleeping.”_

_“Yeah, yeah. Go get your beauty sleep Blue. Lord knows you need it.”_

_Blue let out a dramatic gasp. “Excuse me? I am beauty personified!”_

_“Keep telling yourself that. You… I think my food just winked at me?”_

_“... Burn it. Burn it with fire.”_

_“You don’t have to tell me twice. Weird alien food…”_

***

“Keith?”

Keith quickly snapped back to reality and looked at his parents. “Hmm? Yeah? What was that?”

His dad smiled kindly at him. “Just asking how you’ve been lately. I haven’t been home much because of work and I want to make sure you’re still doing fine.”

“Oh, um yeah. I’ve been doing alright. Nothing really bad has happened and nothing overly good has happened either. So… yeah. How was firefighting?”

The old man just chuckled and shook his head. “Well there haven’t been any fires around here, so mostly just did maintenance stuff… By the way, your mum mentioned you’ve been going over to Lance’s place?”

“Yeah?”

“Just be a little careful. He lives right next to the forest and there have been a few reports about mountain lions in the area. Just be aware of your surroundings.”

“Okay dad.”


	6. Ladder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because movie references. Also as this is a darker fic I would appreciate a little bit of feedback if at all possible. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :)

“Dreams are so weird.” Said Pidge as they leaned back in their seat. Today Hunk and Pidge has joined Lance and Keith in the classroom during lunch. Pidge had apparently watched the Matrix and was talking up all kinds of conspiracy theories. It had all culminated to them coming to the conclusion that dreams were we weird. Which was a fair enough point.

Hunk nodded in agreement. “Dreams are weird. I once had a dream where I was working in this kitchen and it was the worst thing ever. I kept getting orders and they never stopped.”

“Those kind of dreams suck.” Said Pidge.

Lance scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You guys are all wimps. It’s so easy to wake up from those kinds of dreams. Once you realise that hey, this isn’t real, you can just wake up. That’s what I do.”

Pidge rolled their eyes and ate their sandwich. “Dude, not all of us have asshole energy like you. Some dreams are really convincing no matter how crazy and weird the logic is. I’ve had dreams where I could turn into a bird and I thought that was totally normal.” They looked over at Keith, who was eating a strawberry pudding cup that Lance gave him. “Did you dream anything when you were in a coma?”

Keith thought for a moment. “Um… I don’t think so. I don’t remember.”

“Did you see a bright light?”

“No.”

“Ha, confirmation that there is no afterlife.” Said Pidge in a smug way. “All we got is the here and now.”

“You really didn’t see anything?” Asked Hunk. “That kind of sucks. No offence. You just hear all these stories of people dying or like, being in a coma and having all kinds of weird experiences.”

Keith shrugged. “I don’t really remember anything. You know when you wake up from a dream you don’t really remember it much? I think I would be in that situation.”

Pidge sighed a little. “Man, it would have been so cool if you like, recorded what you were dreaming about… Like, what if you were having some weird Jacob’s Ladder type dream and oh boy that would have been trippy as fuck.”

Keith frowned a little “Jacob’s Ladder?”

“Yeah, it’s this super trippy fucked up movie.” Said Pidge with a sick grin. “It was a big inspiration for Silent Hill. There was like the present, and the past and the demon world and Vietnam war. It was so cool and weird. The demons were freaking amazing… Best part about the whole movie was that it is super ambiguous! You don’t know what is actually happening!”

Lance frowned a little. “Isn’t the main consensus on that movie that it all takes place in the guy’s mind as he’s dying?”

“Well yeah, but big problem with that.” Said Pidge. “There are Nixon pins in the future scenes after the war where he was meant to have died. How can he know about the future when he died in the past? How?”

“You and your damn theories.” Muttered Lance. “How did we get from the Matrix to Jacob’s Ladder?”

They rolled their eyes. “Because they are both technically dreams. Like, one is a robot made simulation, and I totally think that it’s a simulation in a simulation, but still! Dreams within dreams man! Totally cool!”

“It was not a simulation in a simulation.” Said Lance. It quickly devolved into a deep conversation between Pidge and Lance while Hunk and Keith kind of watched them bounce ideas and theories off each other like they were serving tennis balls.

“You understanding any of this?” Asked Hunk.

Keith shook his head. “Not a clue. I don’t even really know what Jacob’s Ladder or the Matrix actually are. I’m just here for the discussion though. I’m waiting to see one of them throw the first punch.”

Hunk laughed and started tapping rhythmically on the desk. “Yeah… But you’re just joking about that, right? They aren’t actually going to fight?”

“I doubt it. Don’t stress about it.” 

Hunk’s tapping stopped being so frantic but he finished whatever pattern he was tapping out before he sighed in relief. “Okay. That’s good.”

Suddenly Pidge slammed their hands down on the desk in front of them. “Question time boys! Do you believe that if you were in a coma your subconscious would try and wake you up, or would you be conscious and hear everything around you?”

“I’d say it depends.” Said Hunk. “Like, if I was in a coma I’d want to at least be able to dream. I’d go crazy if I could hear everything going on around me. But I guess it depends on how and why you’re in a coma? Like there's probably a difference between getting knocked out and a medically induced coma.”

“I say dream thing.” Said Lance. “But like, your body is smart. Even if you had some kind of super mundane dream your body would find ways to slap you around and say, hey, something’s wrong here. Wake the fuck up. What do you think Keith? Seeing as how you’re the only one in a coma.”

Keith just shrugged. “Don’t know. I didn’t have any dreams or was aware of what was around me or-” Wait, that was a lie. He did remember something. “-Voltron. I remember Voltron… Like, It’s kind of a distant memory but in my head we were playing Voltron.”

Lance frowned. “Dude, that is lame. Like really lame. Playing a tabletop game for months? Boring.”

“It wasn’t like that. Like, we were actually paladins. We actually went out and did stuff like save the universe from the Galra… Okay I admit that sounds super dumb but I guess it was kind of cool? It was kind of like being in a movie or something.”

Pidge nodded. “That’s actually pretty cool… So were you like following the arcs from our game or were you off doing your own thing?”

Keith shrugged. “I think most of it was following beats from the game… Like we did finish your character arc Pidge with finding your family and everything. I’d found my mum and joined the Blade… There was also the space mall thing… That was pretty fun.”

Pidge grinned. “Yeah, that one shot was pretty interesting. They looked up and the clock and jumped. “Oh crap. Didn’t someone say they had to see Mr Shirogane now?”

“Don’t look at me.” Said Hunk. “I saw him this morning.” 

Lance shrugged. “Not me. I’m seeing him tomorrow afternoon.”

“... Shit. I think it’s me.” Muttered Keith. He quickly got up and ran out the door to Shiro’s office. He really didn’t like tardiness. He understood that it was something that happened but since Keith had known him the longest he of course knew that Shiro would be very annoyed by it for a long time.

***

_This planet was beautiful. The sky was a sunburnt orange, with trees that had silver leaves, and rolling hills with long red grass. They were resting by a lake where golden stones rested in the bright pink water. _

_The Princess had said they should all rest up and relax. Everyone had taken full advantage of it. Yellow was happily floating on the lake with an innertube. Green was wading around and collecting some cool looking rocks. Black was walking in the shallows with the Princess. Blue was sunbathing, and Red was sitting under a tree._

_Red wasn’t a very good swimmer, growing up in the desert he hadn’t had much of a chance to. But that didn’t matter. It was nice to just sit out in the sun with everyone. It was hard to remember that they were all just teenagers fighting an intergalactic war. Kind of scary._

_Suddenly Blue walked up to him grinning. “Hey there Red. What are you doing?”_

_“Sitting in the shade. Why?”_

_“Why not? I just don’t feel like going into the water.”_

_“... Can you not swim?”_

_“...”_

_“Dude.”_

_“What? It’s not that weird…”_

_“You go to the pool all the time!”_

_Red didn’t want to admit he stayed in the shallows or just clung to the side like a starfish and scuttled around like a crab if he didn’t want his feet to touch the ground. “I can dog paddle…”_

_Blue chuckled a little and messed up his hair. “Okay mullet. Whatever you say. If you like I can help teach you how to swim. It’ll be fun. It’s a good life skill to have. I’m a good teacher too. I taught my niece and nephew how to swim. Just the basics till they got a proper instructor.”_

_“... I’ll think about it.” Red didn’t really know if he would take Blue up on that offer._

_Seconds later Blue happily sat down next to Red and grinned at him. “Hey Reeeeeeeed.”_

_“What?”_

_Blue put a bright purple flower in his hair. “Much better.”_

_Red blushed. “Um, why?”_

_“Why not? Purple looks good on you. That and red.” That smile on his face was absolutely beautiful. It wasn’t the same smile Blue usually flashed at the other alien girls that took his fancy. This one was kinder and more gentle._

_He felt his heart skip a beat in his chest. That was weird. He hadn’t felt that before. Maybe he was getting sick? Probably. He was probably allergic to the weird alien flower pollen. It wouldn’t be a big surprise to him. Weirder things had happened to him._

_Blue grinned and pulled Red to his feet. “Come on man. I gotta show you where I got this flower.”_

_“Huh? Why?”_

_“Because why not? You look board just sitting here all by yourself.” Said Blue. “We can go and find some rocks and skip them across the lake? It’ll be fun. I’m a rock skipping champ back on Earth. I can skip a rock six times before it sinks.”_

_“Sounds like you’re overcompensating for something.”_

_“Ah! Well I never! Now I have to beat you. Move your butt Red, we gotta find some flat rocks.”_

_Red rolled his eyes and followed Blue down to the shore line to look for rocks. Blue was such an idiot. Why did he make his heart flutter so much?_

***

“Noises on the radio?” Asked Shiro.

Keith nodded a little as he looked down at his lap. He needed to tell someone about the weird noises and Shiro seemed like the safest person to do it with. He just couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents that he was so mentally broken.

“Yeah.” He said quietly. “It’s all gibberish. I couldn’t find an actual language that it could be.”

Shiro just nodded as he leaned forward on his desk. “Sounds like the local legend is true then.”

“Huh?”

The older man just shrugged. “It’s nothing. Just this old legend about a small shack somewhere in the forest that has a radio in it that ghosts use to communicate with people after midnight or something. It’s kind of silly.”

“You say that yet it is actually happening?”

He shrugged. “I say it’s a legend but it’s really just teenagers and their friends messing around on some old ham radio. No need to really worry about it. Just ignore it.”

“Oh… Why would someone do that?”

“Boredom?” Suggested Shiro. “Maybe it’s a right of passage for some teens? Who knows really. The whole local legend has been around since I was a kid. It was really strange… I think the current legend is that if you decipher what the ghost’s say, you will die or something? It used to be if you found the shack and tried to use the radio you’d die.”

“Is the shack real?” Asked Keith curiously.

Shiro shrugged. “Probably. But I wouldn’t go looking for it right now. It’s cougar season. They will be hunting and trying to eat whatever they can find.”

Keith just nodded. “Okay. My dad already told me about that. I’m not planning to go out and do stupid stuff.”

“Well that’s good. Be careful Keith.”

“I will.”

Shiro smiled and nodded. “That’s good… So you and Lance have started getting closer again?”

“Huh? Oh yeah. I guess we have.” He smiled a little at that. He’d gotten closer to Pidge and Hunk too. It made him smile. It was good to have these people as his friends. He tugged a little at the turtleneck and brushed his finger across the choker he was still wearing. He still wasn’t sure that it really was his, but he liked it.

“Well that’s good. You two were getting pretty close before… Well I’m glad you guys are sorting things out.” Said Shiro. “For a while you guys seemed to have this really weird rivalry going on.”

“Really? Why? How?”

Shiro shrugged. “Honestly I think it was over some test results? But that was a few years ago. Told you that once he gets an idea in his head that it’s practically impossible to change his mind.”

“Yeah… I still want to know why he thought we were doing stuff…”

Shiro shrugged. “Honestly? I have no idea. But we really shouldn’t be talking about Lance. We’re here to talk about you. How have things been going for you? How are you feeling?”

This time it was Keith’s turn to shrug. “Okay I guess? I don’t feel suicidal or anything. I guess I am happy? I’m not sad or anything like that.”

“Well that’s good. How are things going with your parents?”

“Pretty good I guess. My mum is letting me go outside on my own without supervision, but she’s still really worried about me… My dad hasn’t been around much because of work, but he’s apparently talked to someone at work, so now he’s at home? I don’t know. It’ll be nice to have them both around I think.”

“You think?”

“Yeah… If at all possible I want to spend some time with my dad… It feels like it has been a lifetime since I have.”

Shiro smiled kindly at him and started to scribble something on a piece of paper. “Well that’s good. It’ll be good to spend time with your dad. And with that, our time is up today. Unless you have something else you need to talk to me about?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, here.” He passed Keith the note. “Just go get your books and go straight to your next class. If your teacher says anything just give them that note and tell them to call me. Got it?”

“I know the drill Shiro. This isn’t my first rodeo.” Keith quickly got up and left the office. As he passed the receptionist’s desk he happened to spot something he found kind of odd. There was a bird in a cage just sitting there. It wasn’t unusual for members of staff to bring in their animals if they had recently been to the vets or something like that. He remembered walking in once and there was some absolute unit of a dog just sleeping on the floor. When it yawned it made a noise that sounded like it was saying Yep.

This bird however was really weird looking. It had extremely long brown feathers all over its body while it’s face was covered in shorter white feathers with a few golden ones. It stared at him for a few moments before it ruffled its feathers and started to preen. It was a rather odd looking bird.

***

_Red slammed into the wall with such force the wall seemed to bend and form with his armour. It took him a few seconds to become unstuck and fall forward onto the floor. Everything. Fucking. Hurt. He looked up just in time to see the multi eyed masked figure that was a Druid. They had their hand raised and ready to hit him with another lightning attack._

_He screwed his eyes shut and braced himself to take another hit, but it never came. He opened his eyes to see Blue crouched down in front of him with his shield up. When did he get here? Wasn’t he meant to be halfway across the Galra base?_

_“Blue? What the fuck are you doing here?”_

_“By the looks of it, saving your dumb ass.” Muttered Blue. “Come on man, we gotta make our way out of here and back to the Lions. Green and Yellow should be done by now. Think you can walk?”_

_“Yeah, I’m fine.” Red slowly pulled himself to his feet and started looking around. “Wait, where did the Druid go?”_

_Blue frowned a little. “I guess they ran off? I’m not sure.”_

_“... Let’s just get out of here, okay? This is making me uneasy.”_

_“Dude, when aren’t you uneasy on a mission?”_

_“... Shut up and move before we get killed.” Muttered Red as he shoved Blue._

_Red and Blue moved carefully down the hallway until they got to a vent. Once they got to the vent they quickly climbed inside and crawled out onto the planet’s surface. They took Blue and Yellow’s lion’s down to the surface while the other three were still in the castle._

_They managed to meet up with Yellow and Green in a small Valley where the Lions were hidden. Both paladins looked slightly singed. “What happened to you two?” Asked Blue._

_“Turns out what Green assumed was the sprinkler system was the decontamination system.” Said Yellow. “Turns out decontamination is fire.”_

_“It was an honest mistake.” Whined Green. “Let’s just get the hell out of here and… Are you okay Red? Your left eye’s kind of all… Bloody?”_

_Red shrugged. “I got knocked around pretty hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if I now have some kind of head trauma. Let’s just get back to the castle so I can get into a pod.”_

***

Keith blinked a few times and looked up at the sky. School was over and he was standing in the parking lot. The clouds were grey and the sky was kind of pink. The sun was setting and it was starting to rain. How long had he been standing there? Minutes? Hours? He wasn’t sure. He needed to get home.


	7. Losing your head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just boys being boys and then stuff happens. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

_It was just his luck. Of course Red would do something stupid and get blasted out into some hostile alien waters. Quite literally too. They were on a planet that was made mostly out of water. At least he had his helmet on so he wouldn’t drown. Still didn’t excuse the fact he couldn’t swim and had no idea how to move around in water._

_He wasn’t too sure which way was up and which way was down. But there were a lot of super angry looking fish around. Which pretty much meant that Red was going to die. He took his bayard out and was ready to slash at anything hostile that came his way._

_After a few moments Blue came riding by on a seahorse looking creature.and grabbed him. “I got you buddy.”_

_“Thanks Blue.”_

_“No problem. You know it’s dangerous to be out in open waters here man. You trying to get eaten by a space shark?”_

_Red shrugged. “Mistook the airlock for a door.”_

_Blue laughed and shook his head. “This is why you need to sleep dude. Think about what would have happened if I wasn’t around? You always have to find something crazy to do even when this is strictly a diplomatic thing.”_

_“You know me Blue. Adventure just has a way of finding me.”_

_“Yeah, I guess.”_

_Red just hummed a little and got off the seahorse when they made it back. The ocean was beautiful and so was Blue… Wait, did they just think that? Why would they think Blue is...? Blue was Blue. Arrogant, cocky, friendly, kind, handsome… Red shook those ideas out of his head while he talked to some of the friendly mer people that had come over to see what all the fuss was about. _

_He had to admire how easy Blue could talk to people. It was second nature to him. That just came with him being a sociable guy. It was something he really couldn’t be. No matter how sociable he tried with people it never worked. They would shrink away from him or treat him like he was going to suddenly snap at them and hurt them. He knew he wasn’t very approachable, but with the way some people avoided him it was like he had some horrible disease or something._

_Blue smiled at him and took Red back inside. As they moved Red couldn’t help but look down at his hand held in Blue’s. It felt… It was nice. It felt nice to hold his hand like this. Why did it feel nice? Why didn’t he want to let go?_

_“What happened?” Asked Black as he quickly rounded the corner. Blue quickly pulled his hand away and shrugged. _

_“Nothing much. Red got shot out of the airlock into the ocean.”_

_Black frowned. “You need to be more careful Red. What have I told you about sneaking around?”_

_“But Black I-”_

_“No buts, You’re just lucky Blue was around.”_

_“I know I-”_

_“No excuses.” Said Black firmly. “Get back to the dining room. The Emperor is wondering where you went.”_

_Red felt defeated. “I’ll head back right now.”_

_“Good. You too Blue.”_

_Blue nodded and the two of them watched Black walk away. Once he was out of earshot Blue couldn’t help but sigh. “Geeze, what’s gotten into Black these days? He’s being such an ass to you. Hell, to us.”_

_Red shrugged. “Maybe because I’m not piloting the black lion? Maybe he wants to take his place in the team again and I’m stopping that from happening?”_

_Hearing that made Blue frown. “What? Red, what are you talking about? You’re our leader. The team can’t function without you. I need- we all need you here with us.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Yeah, so don’t sell yourself short. We’re a team.” They smiled at Red with that million dollar smile that just made his stomach do flips. “There’s no way Voltron would be what it is without you.”_

_“... Well I couldn’t do anything without you Blue. You’re my right hand. You’re the right hand of Voltron.”_

_Blue seemed shocked to hear that, but he smiled at him when he said that. Why did Blue have to keep smiling like that? Why did it do things to him? It wasn’t fair. If Red didn’t know any better he’d swear he was getting a crush on Blue._

***

Lance looked up at Keith from the floor and frowned. “I really can’t believe we are doing homework at your house… Holy fuck.”

Keith shrugged and looked down at him from his bed. “Hey, you’re the one that said you wanted to do homework here since my house is quieter than yours… Or were you getting out of doing some chores at your place?”

“I will neither confirm nor deny that wild accusation.” Grumbled Lance. “... But my dad may or may not be trying to get me to help my brother set up some traps to catch this one pissed off raccoon.”

“Good luck with that.”

There was a knock at the door and Krolia walked in with a tray with drinks and snacks. “Hey there boys Homework going well?”

“Lance is procrastinating again.” Muttered Keith.”

That made Lance gasp. “Rude!” He looked up at Keith’s mum and smiled her. “Thanks Mrs K. You really didn’t have to.”

She shrugged and put the tray on Keith’s desk. “It’s no problem. I brought you boys some honey tea and pudding. It’s one of the few things that Keith can eat comfortably. If you want something else you can help yourself to whatever you can find in the kitchen.”

Lance kind of looked horrified to hear that and quickly shook his head. “No. I’m good. Thanks for asking though.”

“Okay. Bring the tray and cups down when you’re done Keith.”

“I will mum.”

She nodded and left the room. When she left, Keith went over to see what pudding she had left them. Strawberry and matcha. He looked over at Lance and held them up. “What one do you want?”

“Honestly? Neither.”

Keith frowned. “At least eat one spoonful of one of them and at least one cup of tea. You’ll upset my mum if you don’t.”

Lance sighed and reluctantly nodded. “Fine. What flavours are there?”

“Strawberry and matcha.”

“Ew, strawberry.”

Keith rolled his eyes and gave Lance the pudding cup and a cup of tea. “Matcha’s nice.”

“No fucking way. It’s green and gross and I hate it.”

“You’re such a kid. You don’t want to eat green things.”

Lance shrugged and drank some tea. “Green is gross. It’s the colour of snot, broccoli, vomit, and pond scum. It’s nasty.”

Keith rolled his eyes and ate his matcha pudding. “It’s fine. You’re just food phobic or something.”

“Yeah yeah… Where’s the nutrition info on this thing?”

“On the box in the fridge. They don’t have it on individual packets.”

“... Well fuck.” Lance reluctantly ate a spoonful and and set it aside. “So…”

“So?”

“How was your talk with Shiro?”

Keith shrugged. “Eh, same old stuff. But we did talk about some haunted radio station.”

Lance raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You mean the old shack down in the valley?”

“Yeah. Wait… Wouldn’t you get bad reception down in a valley?”

“All part of the ghostly charm and shit.” Said Lance. He groaned a little as he pulled himself up onto the bed next to Keith and gave him a lazy smile. “Want to find it?”

“What?”

“The shack. Want to find it and see if the radio is working? We can bring Hunk and Pidge too. It’ll be an adventure.”

Keith didn’t really like the sound of that. “Um… Isn’t it like, mountain lion season or some shit? They are out and about and like, I don’t want to get eaten by a pissed off cat.”

That seemed to catch Lance off guard. “Oh? Really? The suicidal kid doesn’t want to jump at the chance to possibly end it all?”

He rolled his eyes and lightly elbowed him. “Shut up man. I’m not like that anymore… Can’t be suicidal if I can’t even remember why I was in the first place.”

“... Good point.” He checked his phone and sighed a little. “I should probably think about heading home.” He gathered his books while Keith watched him. Once he had gathered his stuff they walked down to the front door. When they got outside Keith’s dad was just pulling up. He waved at them and Lance waved right back. “Hey there Mr K. Still looking like Keith’s better looking older brother I see.”

Keith punched him in the shoulder. “Stop hitting on my dad. Asshole.”

His dad just laughed it off. “Let him be Keith. He’s just messing around. You leaving now Lance?”

“Yeah.”

“Need a lift back to your house?”

“Nah. A walk will do me some good. See you on Monday Keith.” He shot Keith some finger guns and winked at him before he walked off.

His dad smiled a little at Keith. “You have one interesting friend there.”

“Yeah… Are you cool with him doing that sort of flirting stuff?”

His dad just shrugged. “Well, there’s no harm in it. He does it with everyone. No harm no foul.”

“Oh, okay.”

The older man smiled and ruffled Keith’s hair. “You have a good day at school buddy?”

“Yeah. Talked to Shiro about stuff. Hung out with my friends.”

“That’s good. You can tell me and your mum all about it over dinner. Sound good?”

“Yeah.”

***

Dinner was pleasant enough for the Kogane family. Keith talked a bit about school while his mum and dad talked about work. After a while Keith had to bring up the thing that had been kind of worrying him for a while. He didn’t want to cause them more trouble, but it needed to be said.

He sighed as he stirred his vegetable soup. “Um… So I think there’s something wrong with my brain…” That quickly got his parents attention. “It’s um… It’s because I think I’m losing time. Like, sometimes I kind of forget how I got to places. Like, I remember deciding to go there and when I try to recall it I kind of just… It’s spotty.”

“Honey…” His mum reached over and put her hand on his arm. “I’ll make an appointment tomorrow and we’ll get this sorted out. Okay?” 

“Okay. Thanks mum.” He tapped his spoon against the bowl. “So um… Do you think I might have brain damage because… You know?” His parents tensed up a little and shared a look. 

His dad quickly answered. “It’s possible… The paramedics did say you weren’t exactly alive for a few minutes… I’m sure it will probably be a simple fix, and even if it isn’t it won’t change how we feel about you.”

“Thanks dad.”

“So what are your plans this weekend?” Asked his mum. “Got some homework to do? Going to meet up with friends?”

Keith shrugged. “Lance said something about going to find that radio shack from that urban legend thing. The one with that sends out weird cryptic messages and stuff?”

“No.” Said his dad. “I told you already that there are more mountain lions around this time of year. You can do it in a few months. Just not right now. Lance should know this. Everyone knows how dangerous it can be right now.”

“Okay, relax. I’m not going to go.” Said Keith. “I was just saying that’s what Lance was talking about. I’m not going to go out and risk my life for something that probably doesn’t even exist.”

The older man sighed a little, but still had a disapproving look on his face. “Good. Finish your soup and go have a shower.”

***

Keith did as he was told and finished his soup before having a hot shower. It felt like to stand in the heat, but his mind did end up wandering to Lance. He hoped that he wouldn’t actually go and look for this mystery shack. Where ever it was it was going to be really deep in the forest. If the mountain lions have already moved closer to town then Lance could really get killed. He had to have been joking. Right?

The thought of Lance deliberately going into the forest to get eaten by mountain lions made him feel sick. Wasn’t he meant to be the suicidal one? Should he tell Shiro about this? Maybe just drop a subtle hint? That would probably be a good idea. Maybe Shiro and everyone would take it more seriously now? That would be good.

He got out of the shower and wiped the steam off the mirror with a slight squeak. He frowned as he looked at himself in the mirror. He hated the fact that his bruise was still very prominent and visible. It didn’t look like it was going to fade any time soon. Maybe he could try and use some makeup to cover it up? He was tired of turtlenecks.

He lightly touched the bruise and flinched a little. It was still tender and hurt like a bitch. This didn’t seem normal to him. He should probably ask the doctor about that after talking about his neck too. Once he dried himself off he went to toss his towel up on the towel rack and went to get dressed when noticed something that made him pause. 

There were a few dark splotches here and there on it that really shouldn’t have been there. He didn’t understand what it was. He cautiously pick it up and sniffed the fabric. It smelt kind of metallic. A shiver ran down his spine as he rubbed his thumb over one of the stains and red smeared his skin.

“Oh no… Oh no… Oh no, no, no, no, no.” He quickly looked in the mirror and saw something that made his stomach turn. The bruise on his neck was bleeding. His neck was bleeding. Why was this happening? What the hell was happening?

Keith quickly turned his head and fell. He hit the ground pretty hard. He attempted to cry out in pain, but he couldn’t. That’s when he noticed something was slumped over the floor next to him. It took him a few seconds to realise what he was looking at, but it didn’t take him too long to recognize his headless body. 

Oh, his head fell off his body? That made sense. Explained why he couldn’t call out or move. Everything finally gave way and he finally just lost his head. If only Lance could see him now. He would probably laugh. He would probably laugh if he had lungs right now and his vision wasn’t turning to black.

***

A knock at the bathroom door made Keith jump. He was still standing in front of the mirror. Naked, dry, but just staring blankly into the mirror. Okay, hallucinations were a new thing, and definitely a bad thing. He definitely had something wrong with his brain. He was sure of it.

“Keith?” Called his mum. “Are you almost done?”

“Yeah. Just getting dressed now!” He called as he quickly put his clothes on and walked out. He knew he looked a little spooked since his mum had a very concerned look on her face.

“... Are you okay?”

“Is my bruise bleeding?” He asked. “I thought it was… I thought I might have seen some blood on my towel…”

She quickly checked his neck and sighed in relief. “No blood. Maybe you were just mistaken? Could have just been dirt? It could have just been a shadow?”

“... Yeah. probably a shadow. Sorry…” Keith excused himself and quickly went to his room. He needed to lie down and sleep or something. Hallucinating his head falling off was really messing with his head. That almost sounded like a shitty joke Lance would make.


	8. The Big Snap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well... Enjoy this and have fun with the code. Congrats to people that have cracked it. I will post how to crack it in the last chapter so no one spoil it in the comments okay? Please and thank you. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

Despite his father’s warnings Keith still found himself walking close to the forest. He wasn’t too sure what was drawing him there. Well, he had an idea, but he didn’t like the idea that he was subconsciously acting on his suicidal impulses or something. That would have sucked. He thought he was getting better. But he wasn’t getting better. He was seeing a doctor tomorrow anyway, so it wasn’t a huge deal.

Just as long as he didn’t start seeing things or think he head was falling off again it would be fine. Like right now, he felt like he was being followed or watched, but he knew that wasn’t true. There were no cars on the street or people outside of their houses… Now that he thought about it, that was really weird. It was the weekend. People should be out and about doing stuff, but there was no one doing anything. Not even a single soul walking on the street like him. It was unnerving.

There was a slight fluttering noise like bird wings and Keith turned his head fast enough to see something like an owl fly into the forest. Then he caught sight of something just out of his peripheral vision. A person in brown robe wearing a white mask. They were standing there, watching him from just behind the trees.

They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity to him before the robed figure moved and quickly left. Keith’s heart was hammering in his chest. That had to be some weird hallucination that his brain was making up. There was no way that it was real. This had to be a joke. Some sick joke his mind was playing on him.

Yet, before he knew it, Keith was running into the forest after the masked person. Who were they? Why were they here? He had to find them and get some answers. But answers to what? He had no idea. Would he even like the answers he was going to get?

***

_Black had sent him and Blue down to a planet to do some recon. It seemed like everything was okay from their initial readings. The atmosphere was fine and breathable, so they didn’t need to bring oxygen with them. But they still wore their helmets just in case._

_However there was a faint bit of hazy pollen that made it past the filtration and was starting to mess with his head a little. He felt a little dizzy and Blue wasn’t fairing any better. He looked a little disoriented and had his hand over his face like he was going to be sick._

_“You doing okay?” Asked Red._

_“I-I don’t know…” Said Blue quietly. “I think I’m allergic to the pollen… I’ve sent a scan back to Green and we should, oh they got back to me already.” They read the information Green sent and frowned. “Um… something about releasing endorphins and stuff… I don’t know, I can’t think… Blah, blah, blah… Stuff about deepest desires and stuff…”_

_“... We should head back.” Muttered Red. He quickly turned and went back towards their shuttle._

_“Wait why?” Asked Blue as they reached out and grabbed his wrist. _

_Red’s skin felt warm despite Blue only touching his armour. He gulped a little and pulled his hand away from Blue. “Don’t touch me!”_

_“... Dude relax. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”_

_“Sorry I just… I just can’t handle people touching me right now…” He couldn’t tell Blue he had a slight crush on him. Not right now. Blue was straight. He only ever flirted with girls or at least those that presented as female. Aliens were strange. Either way if Blue found out he had a crush on him that could be the end of Voltron. Blue would feel awkward. Red would feel awkward. Blue might feel disgusted and not trust him anymore. He couldn’t risk it. He was the leader and if he couldn’t lead..._

_“Red?”_

_“Huh?”_

_Suddenly Blue pulled Red close so the two of them were inches from his face. There was lust in his eyes. The eyes that kept switching from his own eyes to his lips. Red couldn’t help but also gazed at Blue’s lips._

_Before Red could stop himself he removed their helmets and crashed their lips together. It felt good. He wanted to keep kissing him. He didn’t want to move away from Blue and considering how close Blue was holding him and desperately kissing back, it didn’t seem like that wanted to stop either._

_Eventually though they had to pull away to breathe. Blue was grinning while Red was just blushing. “Y-you’re not straight?” Asked Red breathlessly._

_Blue chuckled. “I’m bisexual. I like both… And I’ve liked you for a long time.”_

_“... L-let’s go back to the ship.” Muttered Red. “W-when the pollen has worn off then we’ll talk.”_

_“Okay, but I don’t think my feelings for you are going to change.”_

_“... If you say so.”_

***

Keith tripped and fell flat on his face. He blanked out there for a second. What the fuck was that? Why was he thinking about that? When the fuck did that happen in their campaign? He had no idea. He pulled himself up and dusted himself off. 

What was he doing again? Oh yeah, he was following some weirdo in a robe and now he… Keith looked around and gulped. He was in the middle of the fucking forest and he had no idea where in the forest he was. He wasn’t even on a trail, or anywhere near a trail.

He groaned in frustration and punched the ground. He was a fucking idiot. How the hell could he do this His dad told him not to do this. There were fucking mountain lions out here. He was completely fucked. He shouldn’t have followed something he thought he saw. There was nothing there. Fuck.

He heard something snap and he quickly dived behind a tree and peeked out. It was the weird person in the robe. They were walking down a small hill. Keith frowned a little and weighed up his options. Screw it. He might as well. Fuck it.

He carefully stalked the person in the robe deeper into the forest. Eventually Keith followed them into a valley and to a small shack. Keith hid behind a tree and just watched the person in the robe stand in front of the shack. They stood there and their head twitched a little and a second person wearing an identical robe and mask.

When they appeared they left the door of the shack open and the sound of white noise spilled out. It gave him a headache listening to it, but Keith couldn’t figure out if this was something he was actually seeing or if he just lost his mind. Maybe he was just losing his mind? Fuck he hoped not. 

The two robed figures started talking to each other, but when they talked their heads twitched and flailed around so fast that they blurred. While that in itself was disturbing, but they were talking in that weird language again.

_“Nmid tu, oht Snudilip ori gnukcitti. Tihw ed ow ed?”_

_“Ow OvIh et yrt dni pets moht merf gnuttog oht kcilb nudilip fe osruec. Oh su pet ytureurp.”_

_“Tab!-”_

_“Aey tniw et llot Riggih tihw donoppih? Hioy, stiht tihw u thgueht. Tsaj ed si oraey dlet.”_

_“Ow doon et hsunuf. Wan.”_

Okay, Keith needed to figure out if this was real or fake. This really didn’t seem real to him right now. Everything was kind of fucking strange. Normal people didn’t wear robes and masks and meet up in radio shacks to broadcast weird language. It was really fucking weird. This couldn’t be real. But people knew about the radio station. People heard the weird things people said on it. 

He had to figure out who these people were… But if they were real they looked like the kind of people that would be serial killers. Serial killers that would kill him and hide his body. That was kind of really fucked. He would get fucking killed. Shit.

Suddenly a loud roar echoed through the valley making everyone jump and look around. Was that a mountain lion? It had to be, but it sounded more like a lion? He wasn’t sure. Either way both he and the robed figures seemed to be worried about it. Did that mean the sound was real or that the people were real because they heard the sound?

_“Tihw siw tiht?”_

_“Yoht ora oroh. Nmid tu. Erow tue fe omut.”_

The two robed figures suddenly ran off disappearing into the trees. Keith quickly lost sight of them and now he had no idea where to go or what to do now. He had no idea where the trail was. He was fucking lost with a fucking mountain lion out and about.

He cautiously moved towards the small shack. It seemed like it might be safer if the mountain lion was closer. He’d have some kind of shelter. When Keith got inside he was surprised to see that this was just a small, empty shack. There wasn’t even a radio in there. It was weird. Why wasn’t there a radio in there? He heard the weird white noise There had to be something in there. There had to.

The sound of the shack door creaking open made Keith spin around and gulp. Staring down at Keith was a mountain lion covered in red dirt. Hallucination or not Keith didn’t want to be around a mountain lion. He didn’t want to die.

The mountain lion bared its fangs and crouched down. It looked like it was ready to pounce. Keith only had seconds to spare. But he didn’t know what to do. The mountain lion growled and pounced at him. He felt the teeth of the animal wrap his neck and puncture the flesh. He was going to die.

***

_Keith hit the floor and looked around in confusion. Where was he? He was in some kind of purple void filled with stars. What did this mean? Was he dead? Had he just died? Is this actually what you saw when you died? Some purple nothing void? Was this some kind of purgatory? The after life?_

_He looked around and in the distance he saw someone standing in the distance. “H-hello?”_

_“Htuok?” Called a voice behind him._

_Keith quickly turned around and saw someone standing in armour. Keith couldn’t really see who they were. All he could tell was that they were really tall. And kind of lanky? He couldn’t quite put his finger on who they were._

_“Htuok!” They exclaimed._

_This person kind of looked like Lance? Oh, it probably was Lance. Perfect he was dead and the last person he thinks of is Lance. “Where are we?”_

_“Tihw? Htuok, tihw ori eay gnuyis?” Asked Lance. “A tnad dnitsrodne. Kiops rodual. I tnic rio uay.”_

_Keith frowned a little and looked around. What did he mean? What was Lance trying to say? And why was it in that stupid language “I-I think I’m dead?”_

_“Tihw?!" Lance sounded horrified. “Tihw? An Htuok, eay tnic ob diod! Tihw ori eay gnuklit teabi? Kiops pe! Mu gnutuahs oroh!”_

_“I don’t know what you’re saying!” Yelled Keith. “I got lost! I got lost in the forest and I found the ghost radio shack thing! Then a fucking mountain lion showed up and now it’s fucking killing me! I’m dead Lance… I’m dead… And I can’t even talk to you because you’re just speaking this bullshit language that I don’t understand. Why are you doing this to me Lance? Why?”_

_“An… Htuok oreay-” A roar rang out through the purple void and a pair of bright yellow eyes lit up behind Lance’s head. “-Llow fnuf eay! Lltu ob yika Htuok. Ow lluw dnuf eay! Dor dni Kcilb lluw dnuf eay! Ow lluw! U osumarp! U oval-”_

***

Keith eyes snapped open and he sat up. He was in the hole again. The hole by the hanging tree. He had no injuries or anything that would show that he had gotten into any kinds of fights. He felt sick. His eyes started to sting and his breathing became uneven as he tried to not burst into tears. It didn’t work.

He heard someone approach him, but he didn’t care. He was distressed. Everything that happened was a fucking hallucination. A lie. He was losing his grip on reality. He’d fucked himself up so completely when he tried to die he just killed his brain instead.

“Oh shit, is that you Keith?” Keith wiped his eyes and looked up at Lance who was staring down at him in shock. “Oh fuck.” He quickly jumped down and crouched next to him. “Hey man, what happened? Why are you crying?”

Keith whimpered and pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes to try and stop himself from crying. “I-I’ve lost my mind.” He whimpered. “I’ve gone crazy.”

“What? No. Shut up man. Why do you think you’ve gone crazy?”

He gulped. “Last night… Last night after I had a shower I thought my head fell off.”

“What?”

“My head fell off my shoulders and hit the ground. I saw my body fall down next to me and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Whimpered Keith. “I only snapped out of it when my mum knocked on the bathroom door. Then I for some reason followed a robed figure into the forest, they spoke in some weird language and then a mountain lion killed me.” His voice was still quivering no matter how much he tried to stop it. “Then I was in some purgatory? I don’t know and I woke up here. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know what to do. What’s happening to me? What’s happening? I’m losing my grip on reality.”

Lance was extremely surprised to hear Keith talking like that. He almost seemed as distressed about it as Keith did. He pulled Keith into a hug, holding him tightly in his thin arms. “It’s okay Keith.” He ran his fingers through Keith’s hair and it felt kind of comforting. He kind of liked it and he did feel very reassured by his words. “I’m here now. I’ll do everything I can to help you. We can figure this out together. Okay?”

“O-okay… Thank you...” 

“Okay… Let’s get out of this hole and we can get one of your parents to pick you up. Sound nice?”

“Yeah. Sounds good.”


	9. Mournful sounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there everybody. Hope you're all having a good day/evening/everything in between. Kudos and comment when you can and enjoy :D

Keith immediately went to the hospital after Shiro had picked him up. The doctors had run tests on him for what seemed like hours. He’d had his brain scanned repeatedly and he’d been poked and prodded with needles until he became too exhausted and fell asleep. When he woke up again he was in the car in his mother’s arms. She was gently stroking his hair and humming softly as his father drove them home.

He closed his eyes again and when he opened them again he was lying on his bed. He had no idea what was happening anymore. He really fucked up his brain now hasn’t he? Why did he do these kinds of things to himself? He was an idiot.

His mum knocked on his bedroom door looked in. “Keith? Honey? Are you awake?”

“Yeah…”

She smiled a little and walked over to him and sat on the edge of his bed. “Are you doing okay?”

“I guess… Fuck, I really screwed up didn’t I?” 

“No honey. It’s okay.” She gently ran her fingers through his hair. “It’s okay. None of this is your fault. We will work through this. You just need to relax and try not to think about it. It’s okay.”

Keith hummed a little and his dad walked into the room. “Hey there champ… Shiro’s here. He wants to talk to you if you’re up to it?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Keith slowly sat up and held his pillow close to his chest.

His parents left and Shiro walked in. “Hey there. Are you doing okay now?”

“I-I don’t know… I don’t remember you picking me up.”

Shiro nodded. He had a sympathetic look on his face. “You were pretty hysterical when I came around. It was honestly really scary. You were kind of flailing and Lance was holding you back to stop yourself from hurting your self.”

“... I did?”

“Yeah, you did.”

That didn’t sound right, but considering Shiro was sane and he was out of his mind it could have been possible. He’d just have to trust him. “Oh, okay… I’ve really fucked up Shiro… I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Shiro gently placed his hand on Keith’s shoulder. “It’s okay Keith. None of this is your fault… Maybe you should stay home for a few days? It’ll be better for you if you do. What did the doctors say?”

“I-I don’t remember.. I just… I passed out after a while. I was too tired.” He buried his face into his pillow. “I… I thought I died for a second there… I thought I saw people in the forest and I… I thought a mountain lion killed me. I felt it wrap its teeth around my neck and-”

“That’s enough.” Said Shiro calmly. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

Keith nodded little and slowly looked up at him. Shiro as always, was a pillar of authority while still being a source of comfort. “... Hey Shiro? Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure thing. What’s up?”

“... Why am I not in a hospital or a psych ward?”

“...”

“Shiro?”

“...”

“Shiro?”

He awkwardly cleared his throat. “I um… I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your parents about it. Maybe you weren’t as bad as you thought you were?”

‘Maybe? I guess?” Keith was really confused and was starting to develop a headache. “Guess I’m not going to go to school for a few days huh?”

“Probably. I would recommend it. You need to rest… Do you want me to let your friends know that you’re at home?”

“Yeah… That would be for the best.”

Shiro nodded a little and looked over at his desk. “Oh, you have a radio?”

“Yeah. It’s broken. I’m trying to fix it.”

Shiro nodded and went over to have a look at it. “... Shouldn’t be too hard to fix. Looks like it’s just some loose wires. Might need to solder some parts… Considering your um, current condition it might be best not to handle a soldering tool. You might night need your dad to do it?”

Keith nodded in agreement. “Yeah. That’s what I’m thinking… I heard the weird radio station through it.”

“... Really?”

“Yeah…” He nervously tugged on the pillow. “I can’t figure out what anyone is saying though.”

“Maybe it’s just gibberish for the sake of gibberish?” Suggested Shiro. “You shouldn’t over think any of this. You’re still not very well, physically or mentally.”

“I guess…” He sighed and lied down. “I um… I’m going to go to sleep or something.”

“Sure thing buddy. You do that. Everything will be okay. Just focus on getting better.”

“Yeah…” He watched Shiro leave his room and closed his eyes. He was way more fucked up mentally than he should have been. He closed his eyes and silently hoped that this was just a one off thing. That he wouldn’t see and hear things again that he shouldn’t. It was terrifying not being able to tell what was real and what was fake anymore.

***

_Red had gotten a little ill when he was on a mission to a planet. It seemed to just be space hayfever. Not that he really cared that much. He just needed to stay in bed for a while and rest up. He’d be fine in the morning. It was fine. _

_There was a knock at the door and Blue walked in with a water pouch in his hand. “Hey there Red. Princess asked me to go and bring you one.”_

_“Fantastic. You needed an excuse to see me.”_

_Blue pouted and walked over to him. “To be fair I was coming to see you anyway. You know I always make time for my boyfriend. You idiot.”_

_“Asshole… Give me that water.” Red slowly moved into a sitting position and snatched the water out of his hands and drank._

_Blue chuckled and sat on the bed next to him. “But seriously Red, are you okay? You kind of just came back to your room after you came out of the healing pod.”_

_“Yeah. I just… I’m tired. I just want to rest.”_

_“Too tired for me?”_

_“What? No. Never too tired for my boyfriend.” Blue blushed a little and looked away from him. “What? Did I say something wrong?”_

_“No I just… That’s the first time you’ve called me your boyfriend. That’s all.”_

_Red laughed. “Seriously? Loverboy Blue is getting all embarrassed because I said that you’re my boyfriend?”_

_“Ah, don’t say it again!” Whined Blue._

_Red laughed and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “But I want to and I’m going to. Boyfriend.”_

_“Reeeeeeed.”_

_“Yes boyfriend?”_

_Blue pouted. “You’re so mean to me Red.”_

_“I could be worse, and you know it.”_

_“You know… things would be easier if we could just tell people that we were a couple…”_

_“...” Red blushed a little and looked away from him. “I’m sorry… I just… You know how private I am. I like, I don’t see how or why it’s anyone else's business that we are together… And it’s not like I’m ashamed of you or anything, and I know everyone would be cool with me coming out as gay but like… You know… Internalized self hatred and all that…”_

_“Totally get it Red. You just take your time. We’ll go at your pace. Okay?”_

_“Thank you Blue.”_

_Blue kissed him. Red happily returned the kiss. Sure he kind of felt like crap but at least he had Blue by his side. At this point Blue was the only thing really keeping him sane anymore. For Blue, Red would do anything._

***

Keith’s eyes snapped open. It was dark outside. He had no idea what the time was or how long he had been asleep and dreaming? He needed something to take his mind off it, but his mind kept going back to Voltron. Red and Blue were dating in game. That was really awkward considering they were his and Lance’s characters. Was that kind of thing normal for these types of games? He didn’t really know.

Just because it was part of the game didn’t mean it translated into real life at all. They were friends at most right? He didn’t actually like Lance that way and Lance sure as hell didn’t like him that way. If he had then Lance probably would have been way nicer to him when they met up again and wouldn’t have treated him as coldly.

Keith had to come to the logical conclusion that his and Lances relationship was strictly platonic no matter what things happened during the game. That’s just all it was. A game. It was nothing else. But there was always some kind of grain of truth in fiction, or something like that. He didn’t really know too much anymore. He should just push it all out of his head like Shiro suggested.

As he quietly stewed over this he noticed the subtle hum of white noise coming from his desk. Did Shiro somehow jiggle something into place when he put it down? Either way it was kind of annoying. He walked over to it to see if he could turn it off and was kind of surprised to hear two new voices.

They were still talking that weird language but it was two distinctly different people than the people that were talking before. It sounded like a male and female voice having a conversation.

_“Okiw pe Htuok. Osiolp…”_

_“Osiolp okiw pe… Yhw tnsu oh gnukiw pe?”_

_“Ocnil oroht tnsu hcem oram ow nic ad. Rovotihw Riggih dud at muh oroht su gnuhtan yllicusyhp gnarw htuw muh oramyni.”_

_“As stu lli nu suh dioh?”_

_“Mu duirfi as… Oroht tnsu hcem oslo ow nic ad thgur wan. Uay dleahs ag at dob dni-”_

_“Llu pools rotil. Tsej oviol se onali raf tub yika?”_

_“...Yika.”_

_“… Osiolp Htuok… Osiolp okiw pe…”_

The mournful tone in the male’s voice very subtly pulled at Keith’s heart strings. It was like watching a foreign film. He might not know what was being said, but he could still pick up the feelings that were being conveyed. 

He managed to turn the radio off and headed down to the kitchen to find something to eat. Keith found another pudding cup and ate it quietly while staring at the clock. The clock showed that was two am. He should go back to bed soon. Even if he wasn’t tired. 

Maybe he should just go back to his room and work on fixing the radio a little? That might help him. Something to keep him grounded? That would be nice. He was pretty sure he heard or read something about finding things to ground him.

When he got back to his room the radio was still buzzing with white noise and the male voice whispering ever so slightly.

_“Osiolp okiw pe… Osiolp okiw pe...Osiolp okiw pe...Osiolp okiw pe...Osiolp okiw pe...”_

Keith wished he knew what they were saying.


	10. Stuck at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg there is so much code stuff in here. What the hell. Hopefully I did the code right, but if it's a little off that's because I wrote so much I have no idea if it's all correct. Bleh... Anyway, kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

The mournful tone on the radio stuck with Keith for some reason. It just struck a nerve with him and stuck with Keith all day as he sat at the desk in his room. He tried to fix the radio but he was getting absolutely nowhere. Maybe he should just give up and go buy a new one? But where would he get one? He didn’t remember there being any place to buy a handheld radio in town.

He sighed and started coughing again. This was boring. He wanted to go back to school with everyone. Being home sucked. He had nothing to do. Maybe he should go and watch TV for a bit? That would be good. When was the last time he actually sat down and watched TV? Something that he liked?

He wandered down to the lounge room and turned on the TV. He started to channel surf until he got to a some weird and colourful TV show full of what he could only describe as the weird noodle people show. It was weird. Had to be a preschool show.

He turned off the TV and lied down on the couch. Everything sucked. There was just nothing to do. Where were his parents now anyway? Wasn’t he not allowed to be left alone after his mind snapped like that? He looked out the window and saw his mum checking the mail. Oh, so she was home after all.

Keith sighed again and stared up at the ceiling. Everything fucking sucked. He wanted his friends back. His mum walked into the house and looked over at him. “Oh, hey there Keith. Not so tired anymore?”

“No, I’m still tired… Just kind of heavy. You know? Like, I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it…”

“It’s okay Keith.” She said calmly. “You don’t need to explain it… School’s over now. Maybe your friends will come over?”

“Maybe. Probably not.”

“Well, you never know. One of them might. They could be bringing over your homework?”

Keith snorted. “Yeah, right. If I missed any homework Shiro will bring it to me.”

“You never know.” A knock at the front door made them both jump a little. She went and opened the front door and Keith felt like he was going to die when he heard the voice on the other side of the door. 

“Hey there Mrs K. Looking as young and beautiful as always.”

“Guessing you lot are here to see Keith?”

“You know it Mrs K.”

She chuckled a little and walked into the lounge room. “Keith, your friends are here to see you. Lance, Hunk and Pidge.”

Keith frowned a little and looked up at him. “Oh, hey guys?”

Pidge smiled and sat next to him. “Hey Keith, how are you going?”

Hunk sat on the other side of him and nervously tapped his fingers against the side of the couch. “You doing okay there buddy?”

He shrugged. “I’m fine I guess? Glad you guys could come over. It’s really boring here.”

“I can imagine.” Muttered Lance. “Sitting around here fucking sucks when you can go on one hell of an acid trip without the acid.” Hunk and Pidge shot Lance a dirty look. He just shrugged and flopped onto a chair. “What? It’s true.”

Keith chuckled a little and rolled his eyes. “You know what Lance? You’re right. At least if I was hallucinating than something interesting would be happening.”

“See? Keith gets it.” Whined Lance. “So don’t look at me like that dang it.”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Anyway… I found something interesting on the radio the other day. I wrote it down.” They took out their notebook and held it out for Keith to look at. He was looking at a page that was filled with a series of dots and dashes.

“What am I looking at?”

“Morse code.” Said Hunk. “At least that’s what Pidge thinks it is. They’ve been trying to see if my tapping is spelling anything out.”

“Did you get anything out of it?”

“Mayonnaise.” Said Pidge. “One time he spelt mayonnaise.”

Keith chuckled a little. “Well I would say I’m surprised, but I don’t feel like it is much of a surprise. So what was this about the radio?”

Pidge grinned. “Okay, so I was just messing around with the car radio when my dad was getting gas the other day and I came across a station that was just white noise but like, if you listen, and I mean really listen you can hear a bunch of dots and dashes.” They happily tapped the page and looked so proud. “I haven’t unscrambled it yet or anything, and it’s all kind of mixed up, probably, but it’s still kind of cool.”

Lance chuckled a little. “Bet it spells out something about mayonnaise too.”

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Whatever man. This is still cool. Our town is really freaking weird. It’s kind of cool we have so many mysteries… A little weird it’s all centered around radio stations and junk, but still cool. You just don’t care about mysteries Lance.”

“Guilty as charged. What good can come of poking around where we don’t belong?”

As Lance and Pidge got into an argument about mysteries with Hunk jumping in occasionally, Keith kept looking at the dots and dashes marked on the paper. Pidge put them under the heading; Radio stuff.

**-.-...-.--..--.-**

He had no idea what that meant. Though he did find what Morse code was for mayonnaise since it was circled and underlined with many, many question marks behind it.

**\--/.-/-.--/---/-./-./.-/../.../.**

He wondered if he could crack the code himself? Had had a little experience deciphering morse code, but he couldn’t place why he would need to do that. Maybe it was just some thing that he did with his dad when he was younger? He couldn’t remember. He probably had a book with Morse code in it somewhere. He could probably figure it out if he tried hard enough. Would give him something to do while he was stuck at home.

“... Hey Pidge?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I keep this?”

They frowned a little but shrugged it off. “Sure. Go ahead. I can always find the station again.” They ripped the page out and book and handed it to Keith. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem… Oh! We have your homework!” They pulled some pieces of paper out of their bag and handed it to Keith. “We had to wrangle it out of Mr Shirogane’s hand, but we got it.”

“Oh okay.” Keith looked through the papers and frowned a little. Now he had homework to do along with code cracking. Fun times. “I’m just gonna put this in my room… You guys want to come to my room?”

The group went up to his room and Keith put the paper on his desk. “What’s with the radio?” Asked Hunk.

“Oh, I found it. I’m trying to fix it.” Said Keith. “It’s kind of working, but I need to use a soldering tool and well… I can’t be trusted with anything that’s super heated or could be used to poke myself or anyone else.”

“Fair enough.” Hunk cautiously touched it and the radio prang to life, making everyone jump in surprise.

Keith just shrugged. “It does that sometimes.” The radio was tuned into the weird gibberish station again and everyone was quiet as they listened to the strange conversation. It was three people this time. It was like listening to a forigen opera. Three people were talking this time. 

_“Ow dleahs dnos Aruhs nu. Lltu ob rousio at okim tcitnac htuw onaomas tiht oh stsert.”_

_“Tihw? An yiw. Fu onayni su gnuag nu stu om.”_

_“Yllior? Me… an ocnoffa Ocnil, teb eay syeg tnori yrov osalc… Deay ylbibarp oseic oram mrih niht daag.”_

_“Yihw? Stiht tuhslleb! Htuok dni u-”_

_“-U nic ad tu Ogdup su thgur Ocnil. Htuok lluw dnapsor rottob at onaomas tiht oh stog gnali htuw. Eay awt tnori yltcixo na oht tsob smrot,”_

_“YOH! KTUOK DNI U ORI YIW ROSALC NIHT EAY WANK! OROW GNUTID!”_

_“... Tihw?”_

_“Ocnus nohw?”_

_“... I wof shtnam wan… tuhs. Tnad llot oht srohta. Htuok siw druow teabi gnuttol olpaop wank teabi tu… Mu yrras.”_

_“Yoh, an doon at ob yrras Ocnil… Yika Ogdup, Ocnil su dnuag at ad tu.”_

_“Thgurli… Tsej robmomor, oh sdoon i ovussim kcahs at okiw muh pe. Tu sih at ob omortxo. Suh dnum lluw ovih dopihs dni dognihc gnuhtyrovo. Eay doon at yrt dni pook i riolc dioh. Tuf na htuw tihw suh dnum sih odim pe dni noht kcahs muh okiwi.”_

_“Wah ad U ckahs muh okiwi?”_

_“Dokcef fu u wank. Lluk muh fu eay ovih at. Lltu ob okul i docraf taaber. Lltu ob oht ylna yiw at pins muh tea fa tu. Eay ovih at ad tu, ra Htuok lluw ob kcets okul i gnukcef kcets okul i osatimac olbitgov raf oht tsor fa suh ofiu.”_

_“... Yika. Llu ad ta. Fu tu sniom gnuvis Htuok, llu lluk muh…”_

After that the radio cut to static and then turned off. Everyone looked really confused but it didn’t seem like anyone knew what to say at that. It was odd. The weird conversation seemed to be really heated. Obviously two people were arguing with the third, and the third wasn’t having it.

“Well that was fucking weird.” Said Lance. “I usually hear more demonic growling when I tune into that station.”

Hunk nodded in agreement. “Yeah. Haven’t heard it that clear before.”

“You think the radio station is near by?” Asked Pidge. “The signal would be stronger the closer it is to the source.”

Keith frowned. “That would mean that one of the neighbours is doing it then?”

Lance snickered a little. “Hey, just imagine if this was just a bullshit prank by Mr Shirogane, or like, Coran or Allura? I mean, we are just their guinea pigs, right? They already use us anyway.”

“What would they have to gain by doing that?” Questioned Hunk. “They wouldn’t do that to us.”

Hearing something that sounded like a conspiracy theory made Pidge grin. “Oh? But what if they were? They could be doing mind experiments on us to like try and condition us for some kind of military use. Where does Allura study anyway? This whole town is really fucking weird. This could be some kind of MKUltra shit, and we are perfect candidates too! Like, we’re all kind of fucked up for one reason or another. Like we are all high in the danger zone when it comes to committing suicide.”

“Especially broken neck over there.” Said Lance.

Pidge chose to kick Lance in the knees when he said that. “So like, if something goes wrong and one of us dies, no one will be at fault. It was bound to happen, right?”

Hunk made a slightly distressed sound and nervously started to tap at the watch on his wrist. “Don’t you guys think you’re overthinking this a little? I mean, what the fuck man? No one would actually do that.”

“I don’t know…” Said Pidge. “The government does some shady shit.”

After that they kept talking about what was going on at school and what Keith had missed out on. Keith found it amusing to listen to them talk about all the usual high school drama. It was nice to just listen to them. It brought him some comfort. Just a small amount.

Eventually though Hunk and Pidge had to leave. Leaving Lance and Keith alone. Lance was happily sitting on Keith’s bed going through his phone. Keith didn’t really know what to do, so he kind of just sat on the bed near him and absent mindedly swung his legs.

After a while Lance looked up at him. “You okay there mullet?”

“Yeah… Um… Our characters in Voltron… Red and Blue...”

“Yeah? What about them?”

“... Are they a couple? Like, are they dating?”

Lance gave Keith a confused look. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

Apparently Keith’s mind was playing tricks on him again. That was fine. He could try and play this off. He laughed nervously as his face went bright red. “M-my mistake. I was just confused. My mind is still kind of fucked up so don’t-” His breath caught in his throat when he Lance’s fingers brushed up against his hand. He looked up at Lance’s face and felt his own face heat up even more. “Lance?”

Those perfect blue eyes were just boring into his soul. His facial expression was soft and loving. Something he hadn’t seen before from the other boy. It made his heart flutter and his stomach get tied in knots.

“Lance?”

He leaned in close and kissed him. Keith squeaked in surprise but quickly reciprocated. It felt familiar and it felt right. Why did it feel familiar? Oh, that’s right… They had started dating a few days before Keith tried to kill himself, didn’t he? They had been using Voltron to flirt with each other for months now and then they got closer… Lance asked him out on the Wednesday before it all went down. They hadn’t come out to anyone yet and were just talking about it… That made everything he did even worse.

Lance moved away slightly and smiled sadly at him. “Do you remember now?”

Keith nodded slowly. He felt so ashamed of himself. He was a horrible person. “I’m so sorry… I completely forgot… I… Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me we were dating?”

Lance shrugged. “I don’t know… Maybe because a few days after we got together you killed yourself? Maybe I thought I pushed you over the edge and made you do it? What else was I supposed to think?”

“I-I’m sorry... “ He squeezed Lance’s hand tightly. “What I did it wasn’t your fault. I um… I still don’t know why I did it but you were not the reason for it. You would never be the reason that I… I’m sorry. I love... Do you still want to go out with me?”

Lance smiled a little and hugged him. “Of course I do… There is no one else I want to be with. If you want to…”

“Yes. I mean… If you’re okay with it… I mean, I really did something shitty to you. You have to still be upset at me for that.”

“Shut your mouth Keith.” Said Lance quietly. “It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that we are together now. Okay?”

“O-okay. Thank you Lance.” This felt right to him.


	11. Near death experiences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats again for those who have cracked the code. I am not a very good code maker. Just a reminder not to post spoilers or anything like that in the comments. Much appreciated. Thanks. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

They were a couple. Which one of them confessed first? Was it him? Was it Lance? It had to be one of them. Obviously. Maybe it was Lance? He was the one that was constantly flirting with anything that breathed after all. But it could have been him? He isn’t too sure how or why it would be him but it was a possibility.

Either way he was happy. He liked being able to be around Lance and know that it was a romantic thing. They were sitting in Keith’s backyard under a tree. Keith was just happy to just sit next to him and hold his hand.

Lance hummed a little to himself. “So… Are you going to do something like tell your parents about is?”

“Yeah. Of course.” Said Keith. “Want to do it now? When do you want to tell your parents?”

Lance faltered for a moment. “Oh… Um… Do you really think it is a good idea to talk about this with my parents? I mean, they are Catholic and you’re a guy, and suicidal.”

“So what would they be madder about? Me wanted to fuck boys or me trying to kill myself?”

“Hard to tell. Either one will send you to hell apparently… So, you know.”

Keith nodded a little and leaned against Lance’s arm. He loved the warmth that radiated from Lance even if he was too bony for his own good. He’d have to help Lance gain some weight. He really didn’t have any real idea how to do it though. He’d need to talk to Shiro about it. He needed to help Lance get better.

“So, we have to keep us a secret?”

“At least from my family.” Admitted Lance. “Mainly my parents…”

“That’s okay. You can keep coming back to my place after school. I’d like it if you did.”

Lance smiled affectionately at him. “I know mullet.” He ran his fingers through the other boy’s raven locks and lightly ran his fingers across his neck. “Can we go to your room Keith? I wanna make out with you but I’d rather do it behind closed doors rather than outside.”

Keith blushed and shuddered when he touched his neck, but he smiled anyway and nodded. “Yeah, sure. Let’s go.” 

He stood up and helped Lance stand. They walked hand in hand back into the house and passed Krolia in the kitchen. She saw them holding hands and gave them a slight questioning look, but didn’t question it any further.

“Do you boys want something to drink?”

“Nah, we’re good mum.”

“Thanks for offering Mrs K.”

Keith smiled a little and the two of them went inside his room. Lance happily flopped down onto the mattress and patted his lap, offering Keith the chance to sit on his lap. Keith didn’t think Lance would be able to hold him if he did. But he looked kind of excited, so Keith gave in and sat on his lap. 

Much to his surprise Lance was a lot stronger than his scrawny body looked. He kissed his Keith’s cheek and Keith blushed a little. This felt nice. He liked being able to just have quiet moments like this with Lance.

He kissed the corner of Lance’s mouth and Lance responded by planting a kiss right on his lips. Keith melted into the kiss and lazily wrapped his arms around Lance’s shoulders. Lance’s hands ran through Keith’s hair as he slowly moved them so they were laying on the mattress with him on top of Keith.

His hands slowly slipped down from his head and past his neck. When his hands passed over the bruise he shuddered a little. His bruise was still painfully obvious and well just painful in general. He hoped it would heal soon. He hated having that reminder that he was an idiot.

Slowly, Keith realised that he was having difficulty breathing. He lightly pushed Lance away, but when he did Lance squeezed tighter around his neck. Keith’s eyes flew open in shock as he stared up at Lance. He tried to push him away but when he tried, Lance squeezed tighter. He gasped and struggled to breathe as he scratched at Lance’s arms. He tried to kick and push Lance away but he wasn’t budging.

“Lo siento...” Muttered Lance as he applied more force. “Lo siento... Lo siento... Lo siento… Lo siento...” Keith knew those words. That meant I’m sorry, right? Why was Lance sorry? If he was sorry he wouldn’t be doing this, right? He wouldn’t be killing him. Did Lance hate him that much?

***

_It was just a simple mission. That’s all it was meant to be. Just your usual infiltrate and gather information kind of thing, and then blow everything up. Red and Blue were tasked to enter the Galra base and plant a few bugs for Green. Green was going to download all the information remotely and then activate the explosives inside them._

_But of course Red and Blue somehow got into trouble. They always do. They needed to split up and put the bugs where they needed to be. Neither of them wanted to, but it had to happen. They needed to complete the mission._

_Before they split up Blue gave Red a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’t be reckless now samurai.”_

_“Same goes for you sharpshooter. I’ll kick your ass if you alert them to our position again.”_

_“Aw, sneeze once and you’re branded bad luck forever huh?”_

_To his credit, it wasn’t Blue that completely wrecked the mission. It was Red. He entered an area and carefully placed the last bug and informed Green. However, when he tried to leave the door flew open and he was attacked by three guards. He easily dispatched them but he made too much noise. The noise was enough to set off the alarm._

_After that, wave after wave of enemies started charging at him. This wasn’t good. They had guns. He had a sword. This wasn’t going to end well. He got through to Blue in between waves. “Could use a little help here Blue!”_

_“Shit, was that you? On my way buddy. Hold on a few ticks.”_

_Red did his best to hold them off until Blue arrived. Eventually his luck ran out and he felt something hot hit his side. He stumbled and crumpled over. He moved his hand away to see blood. He’d been hit. He’d been shot._

_He looked up at the Galra that had shot him. They were about to shoot him again when Blue shot them from down the hallway and killed them instantly._

_“RED!” He yelled as he ran over to him. “Shit! Oh shit! Fuck! That looks really bad…” Ever the dramatic Blue. He himself had a few bloody grazes on his arms and legs. Hypocrite._

_“Don’t be dramatic.” Muttered Red. “I’m just bleeding… Let’s get out of here.”_

_“Yeah… Looks like we’ll have to get to the escape pods now. Can’t meet up with Yellow now.”_

_They tried to walk but Red’s injury hurt far too much. He felt like he was going to vomit. He looked down and moved his hand slightly. He immediately felt like he was going to faint when he saw and felt something warm and slimy slipping out of the gaping wound in his side. His intestines were falling out._

_He quickly pressed it back inside and did everything he could to not alert Blue. Blue didn’t need to know the extent of his injury. They had to try and keep their cool and keep going. If they got to an escape pod he would be fine. Everything would be okay._

_He stumbled and Blue grabbed hold of him. “Easy there Red. You’ll be fine you’ll be…” He seemed to notice the fact that Red was kind of bleeding out. They tried to stifel their panic as they tried to get into contact with the rest of the teas. “We need to get him to a healing pod!” He lightly tapped Red’s face to make sure he stayed focused. “Come on man, stay with us! Where the fuck is Yellow?” The base shook and rumbled. “We should have formed Voltron!”_

_“I’m fine you idiot… Just keep going. Green just set everything off.”_

_“Shut up! Don’t talk… Shit you’re bleeding pretty badly… I’m so sorry...”_

_“I’m not bleeding that badly you dumbass.” The sound of blasters going off down the hall quickly drew their attention. “Shit. I’m just slowing you down aren’t I?”_

_“No you’re not. See, we’re right at the escape pods. It’ll be fine.” They quickly looked around to try and find viable escape pods. All of them had either been launched or damaged in a way that would make them unusable. They eventually found one that could work. “Perfect. Come on, we can get out.”_

_The escape pods were only big enough to fit one person, and even if they both squeezed in together they wouldn’t have enough room to pilot it. They would just be drifting off in space and be sitting ducks._

_This wasn’t going to work. Red was done for. This was the end. “... We’re not going to both fit in it.” Using the last of his strength he pushed Blue inside. Just one more time. Just one more time he needed to save Blue._

***

Keith’s eyes snapped open and coughed a little. Lance frowned a little and gently cupped Keith’s face. “Keith? Are you okay?”

“... What happened?”

“You kind of blanked out for a second there.” He said. “I wasn’t too sure what to do but you were like that for a few minutes. I was actually about to get your mum… Is this like what happened when you needed to go to the hospital?”

“Y-Yeah.” Muttered Keith. He nervously touched his throat. “I um… I thought that you were strangling me… Like, one second we were kissing and then you were trying to kill me.”

“Keith…” He squeezed Keith’s hand and tried to give him a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. Everything is fine… But maybe I should go home now? You clearly need to rest and I triggered something in that brain of yours.”

Keith’s eyes went wide in panic and he grabbed Lance’s arm. “W-wait… Please don’t go… Don’t leave me alone… Please…”

“... I’m sorry Keith. It’s getting late. I need to go.”

“... This isn’t your fault.”

“What?”

“This. None of this isn’t your fault.” Said Keith. “My head is just all kinds of fucked up and I… Please don’t leave me…”

“... I’m not leaving you Keith.” Said Lance calmly. “I just actually need to go home. My mama will probably be mad if I don’t turn up soon.”

“O-okay… Bring me my homework tomorrow?”

“Of course.” He kissed Keith one more time and left.

When he was gone, Keith sighed sadly and walked over to his desk. Speaking of homework, he needed to get it done. He sat at his desk and started scribbling things on a piece of paper. As he worked the radio came to life once again. It sounded like a distressed male and a comforting, yet annoyed female voice.

_“U tnic ad tu… U tsej tnic…”_

_“Eay ovih at! Stu tan okul llut yllietci treh Htuok!”_

_“Hioy, teb U tnic tsej lluk muh! U dourt! Gnuhtyrovo tsej doppins kcib.”_

_“Stiht suh dnum gnuyrt at xuf gnuhtyrovo at okim ut lli okim osnos at muh. Eay ovih at ovug muh i kcuuq kcahs. Yrt gnuhsep muh nu tnarf fa i ric ra ffa gnaomas.”_

_“Teb u-”_

_“Eay tniw Htuok at okiw pe?”_

_“Soy…”_

_“Noht lleay ad tu.”_

The radio fizzled out to white noise again. Keith was kind of sad that he couldn’t understand what was going on. It was like he was trying to listen to radio drama in another language. He sighed sadly and started to fiddle with one of the knob on the radio until he heard the weird beeping on that one station Pidge talked about.

**-.-...-.--..--.-**

Yeah. Same beeping that Pidge had written down. Now he just had to find that book that had the code in it and decipher it. He could probably do it if he really put his mind to it. But in all honesty, he was just lazy and kind of emotionally drained after what his mind had told him was dying.

Admittedly it was kind of horrifying to think that Lance would just strangle him like that. It made him nervously touch his neck and ran his fingers over the bruise. Was he too trusting? Was his just an idiot? If he was honest with himself he felt as though he was just insane at this point. What else could he be? 

Then again if he was insane shouldn’t he at least be on some kind of medication? That made sense right? Why wasn’t he on any medication? Were his parents saving up to buy his prescription because it was expensive? Were his parents psychos that were against medications because of their backwards big pharma conspiracy theories? He hoped that it was the first one and not the latter.

Either way it still hurt to think that his boyfriend would go from kissing to strangling him in the blink of an eye. He wondered what triggered that. It was too cruel. Lance wasn’t like that. If anything he would take care of him and make sure nothing bad happened to him when he had one of those weird episodes. He was lucky to have Lance.


	12. Fragile state of mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad people are enjoying this and are having fun rereading previous chapters once they figured out the code. It makes me very happy. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

Before Keith knew it he was back in school. Which was weird. Everything seemed so rushed. He felt like he should be in a psych ward and on medication, yet nothing was done. It was so weird. He didn’t understand this at all. Either way he was sitting in the middle of maths trying to comprehend what he was even looking at. Maths was hard.

He wrote a few equations down without really knowing what it was for. This was so fucking weird. This world was weird. Everything just felt kind of off, but that’s just how it was when you probably killed about five percent of your brain.

He ended up just watching the clock and waiting for time to run out so he could meet up with Lance again during lunch. Being with Lance was one of the only comforts he had. He wondered if Lance was going to give him another pudding cup, and if so what kind? Probably strawberry again. That seemed to be the flavour that Lance kept bringing him.

He smiled at the thought. Lance was really nice when he wanted to be. Maybe he could convince Lance to eat a spoonful of pudding too. Maybe he should try to convince him to take vitamins or some kind of supplements? Anything to make sure that he wouldn’t waste away and die before his time.

The bell rang out and Keith happily got up and went to put his bag in his locker before he quickly went off to see Lance. The building where they let up was strange today aura today. It was almost eerily. Like something was a little off about it, but if Keith was honest it was probably the slight chemical smell from one of the science classrooms.

That wouldn’t surprise him if that was the case. Pidge was a bit of a science wizz and might have knocked over some chemicals if they had science right before lunch. They had done it before. One time they had to call the fire department. His dad was on duty that day and was kind of amused that Pidge almost killed everyone in their science, including themselves. He had given them a stern talking to along with the science teacher and Coran. Keith couldn’t remember what the actual fall out of that was though. It didn’t look like Pidge got into too much trouble since they weren’t expelled.

As he walked down the hallway towards the classroom he heard whispering. He frowned a little and cautiously approached the door. He could hear the voices again, but there was no background radio static. It was like when those robed figures were talking. Were they here now? Why were they here? He shuddered at what he heard through the closed door.

_“Ogdup, u tnad wank tihw at ad.”_

_“Kaal, u tnad wank tihw at ad rohtuo. Suht druow imac miord fa suh su dotcertsnac lli… Llow, druow. Eay doon at yrt i gub kcahs.”_

_“U tnad knuht u nic at suht… Nic u yrt gnusio muh atnu tu? Ow yllicunhcot tnovih dourt tiht.”_

_“... Yika onof. Fu gnuad ut ylwals tnsoad kcank omas osnos atnu muh htuw cugal dni gnunasior, noht hsep muh ffa i ffiuc. Kcueq htoid na tcipmu. Onan fa suht nwird tea tuhs. Tag tu?”_

_“Ona oram nautsouq raf aey.”_

_“Taahs.”_

_“Shtuok dnum su lli druow, dni u mi gnurombomor stub dni socoup marf suh doih. Sgnuht soh odim pe. Yhw?” _

_“Ylbibarp oseicob fa oht Niotli ygalanhcot. Ow dud dlueb tu marf tiht dnum gnudlom tosdioh ow dose nu miot gnunuirt ocna. Teb stu i daag gnuht. Eay wank tihw ffets Shtuok dnum sih dognihc dni tihw ffets su oht omis. Eay dleac yllicitohtapyh cugal bmab muh atnu gnukiw pe.”_

_“Llu ad tihw u nic.”_

Finally mustering up the courage to do it, Keith opens the door. Inside Lance was talking to Pidge. Pidge just nodded at Lance before looked over at Keith. “Hey there. Glad to see you’re back in one piece.”

Keith smiled a little and nodded. “Yeah. What were you and Lance talking about?”

“Oh, My grandma passed away and I’m gonna be out of school for a few days.”

“Oh sorry to hear about that…”

They shrugged. “It’s fine. But I’m going to be gone for a while.”

“Well that’s fine. Hope your family is okay.”

“Thanks man. I appreciate it.” They quickly excused themselves, leaving the two boys alone in the room.

Lance smiled at Keith with that warm smile and soft gaze that he only showed him when they were alone. “Hey Keith. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. Still shocked that I’m here and not in a hospital.”

Lance nodded in agreement. “Honestly, there is something really fucked up about that… You really need to talk to them about that.”

“Yeah, I guess… But how are you going? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m doing alright. Why?”

“I’m just trying to be a good boyfriend and check in on you.”

Lance smiled a little and brushed some loose hair out of Keith’s face. “You are a good boyfriend. The best in the world. You have no idea how amazing you are.”

A blush quickly covered his face. “You just keep saying that stuff even though I’m so fucked up.”

“We’re fucked up Keith. You’re not the only one messed up in the head here.”

“Yeah.” He smiled a little and kissed Lance. The other teen seemed a little surprised, but he quickly reciprocated. Keith loved him so much.

***

_Red let out a shaky breath and slid down to his knees. He pushed Blue into the escape pod. Blue could pilot it back to the castleship and maybe he could get help and save him. That would be nice. To think that Blue would come back for him was stupid. He wished he wasn’t so cynical._

_He was starting to feel cold. Red looked down at his wound. Looking down at it, it was really bad. He was surprised he hadn’t bled out by now, but he felt so cold and tired. It wouldn’t take long for him to bleed out now. He almost had to laugh. To think he would go out like this. Bleeding out and dying all alone on some Galran base. Hopefully it will be quick. Hopefully._

_Red smiled sadly and closed his eyes. Everyone else was safe so it didn’t matter if he died. Sure he wished he went and had a cool death in some big tactical war that everyone would have remembered, but this was fine. One step closer to everyone else getting home like he promised._

_He could hardly hear the sound of the Galran troops storming towards him. They were probably going to shoot him in the head now. That was fine by him. He was tired now anyway. He wanted to sleep._

_He opened his eyes one more time to see some Galran’s running towards him with their weapons drawn. Red just smiled and closed his eyes as his body slumped to the side and he hit the floor. He was tired. He wanted to sleep._

_But he didn’t get the sleep he wanted. He was abruptly awoken to unbelievable pain in his side, but he couldn’t scream. He was able to look around but he couldn’t move. Several Galran’s stood over him and they looked like they were medical staff? He had no idea. Either way he was completely frozen. Why was he still alive? How was he still alive? What were they doing to him? What were they going to do to him?_

_His fear suddenly spiked causing a machine to start making noises. This alerted the Galran’s to the fact that he was in fact conscious. One of them made an annoyed, almost dismissive sound as they held up a syringe or glowing yellow liquid._

_“How many for this… human?” They asked._

_The other shrugged and also prepared their own syringe. “I’d say one, but why make this easy for them?”_

_“Two it is then.”_

_Red was screaming in their mind for them to stop or for his body to move. Anything to avoid what they were about to do to him. But he couldn’t move. He was locked in. His mind was active but his body was completely useless. He felt both needles penetrate the skin on either side of his neck. He felt the liquid being forced into his body._

_His body had a very negative reaction to the chemical. For the first time since he became conscious again all the muscles along his back violently and painfully convulsed to the point he probably would have looked like he had been possessed by a demon if he hadn’t been strapped to a table._

_The pain was the worst around his neck close to the injection sites. The muscles there kept squeezing tighter and tighter to the point where he couldn’t breathe or even swallow. To Red it felt like someone had wrapped a rope around his neck and was attempting to pull it through table he was laying on. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to-_

***

Keith gasped and coughed a few times and he rubbed his throat. What was that? Why was that? Before he could stop himself he had curled up into a ball on the floor. This was too much. Way too much. There was something wrong with him and no one that could actually help him seemed to be willing to help him at all. He hated it.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and Keith’s head snapped up to see Lance giving him a sympathetic look. “Are you okay?” Keith shook his head and grabbed hold of Lance’s shirt with trembling fingers. He quickly buried his head in Lance’s shirt. Lance gave his back a few soothing rubs and spoke in a calming voice. “It’s okay Keith. Just let it all out. It’ll be okay. I’m here… Hey Keith?”

“Y-yeah?”

“We’re having a bonding moment.”

Keith couldn’t help but let out a shaky laugh at that. He remembered that event clearly from the game. He and Lance, or their characters Red and Blue, shared a bonding moment but Blue, being an asshole, decided that he didn’t remember so it didn’t happen.

“Yeah. A bonding moment.” Said Keith. “Just like in the game, huh?”

“The game?”

“Yeah. Voltron.” Said Keith. “The game.”

He looked up at Lance just in time to see his smile waver as his eyes swam with emotions that Keith couldn’t quite read. But suddenly he was all smiles. “Yeah. The game. Voltron. I say Vol you say?”

“... Vol-tron?”

That made Lance laugh, which made Keith smile. Lance slowly helped him to his feet and held his hand giving it a comforting squeeze. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Are we going to see Shiro?”

Lance shook his head. “Not if I can help it. We’re leaving.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you need to get out of here.” Said Lance calmly. “And I… I need to tell you something important. You okay with that?”

“I guess, but why do we have to leave school?” 

“Keith-” Lance grabbed both of Keith’s hands and looked at him with such concern and determination. “-You do trust me, right? Like you actually trust me? You don’t just kind of do but not really?”

“Um, well yeah I do but-”

“Please trust me now.” Said Lance. “Please trust me and come with me. Please…”

“... Okay.”

***

They ended up sitting on a set of swings near a playground a little bit away from the school. Lance was lazily swinging while Keith kicked up some of the wood chips under him. “So?”

“So?” Questioned Lance.

“What do you want to talk about.” 

“Oh right, that.” Lance stopped swinging and lazily smiled at him. “Well, it’s more like a few questions that are super important.”

“Okay?”

“How did we get here?” Asked Lance.

Keith rolled his eyes. “We walked.”

“But who got on the swings first? Me or you?”

Keith frowned a little. “... You did. I remember you ran over and jumped on.”

“I never go on swings first.” Said Lance calmly.

“Huh?” That didn’t make sense. Lance was a super energetic and excitable guy. Swings were what he would go to first. Right?

“I always go on the monkey bars first.” Informed Lance. 

Keith sighed and rubbed his forehead in annoyance. “Fuck, do you really have to bring up my shitty memory? I have a spotty short term memory. Fucking hell…”

“There is nothing wrong with your memory.” Said Lance calmly. “Your memory is perfectly fine.” He got up from the swing and stood over Keith. He gave him a stern, but caring look. “Keith, be honest with me. When was the last time you went to the bathroom?”

“Excuse me? What the fuck?”

“I’m being serious here Keith.” Said Lance. 

“Why the fuck would you need to know about my bathroom habits you weirdo.”

Lance groaned in frustration. “Damn it mullet! Why do you have to be so fucking stubborn? You stupid fucking idiot! I’m trying to help you! I’m trying to save you!”

Keith didn’t want to admit it, but he was actually starting to get scared. “Lance, what are you talking about?”

Lance grabbed Keith by the shoulders and shook him. “Stop asking what I’m talking about and actually use your eyes to look around! For the leader of Voltron you are so fucking stupid!”

Keith quickly snapped out of his stunned stupor and shoved Lance away onto his ass. “SHUT UP!” He yelled. “SHUT UP! THIS ISN’T REAL! WHAT YOU’RE SAYING ISN’T REAL! STOP MAKING ME QUESTION MY REALITY! JUST STOP IT LANCE! JUST STOP IT!” Why was he calling him the leader of Voltron? It was just some stupid game that they were playing. Who gave a fuck that his short term memory was shit? So what if he just randomly daydreamed events from the game? Why the fuck did Lance care about his bathroom habits? Fuck, was this even real? Was this actually happening or was his mind fucking with him again?

Lance looked stunned and went to stand back up. “Whoa, Keith. Just calm down a-”

“I CAN’T FUCKING TRUST YOU!” Screamed Keith. “I DON’T KNOW IF THIS IS REAL OR IF YOU ARE JUST FUCKING WITH ME! WHY WOULD YOU FUCK WITH SOMEONE WHO HALLUCINATES YOU FUCKED UP BASTARD?!”

“I’M NOT FUCKING WITH YOU!” Yelled Lance right back. “Keith… I would never fuck with you…” He dusted himself off and held his hand out to him. “It’s okay Keith. You can trust me. It is okay. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that… Look I don’t know what you just heard or saw but we just sat on the swings and you started screaming at me.”

“Oh… oh fuck…” Keith felt like he was going to be sick. He really couldn’t tell the difference anymore could he? He was really sick. How long until he was just a raving lunatic that wandered around the streets? “I… I need to go…”

Keith slowly got up and started to walk away. Lance was quickly on his heels. “Hey! Wait a second Keith. You shouldn’t be alone right now… Please.”

He sniffled a little, trying very hard not to start crying over the loss of his own sanity. “Okay…”


	13. Falling apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's almost over... I'll be posting the last chapter tomorrow. It's pretty short but I think it ties up the loose ends. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

They ended up in Lance’s room. Keith nervously sat on the bed as he tried to think of something he could use to ground himself. Something that he could do to distinguish reality from fiction so he wouldn’t have to rely on Lance or anyone else having to calmly explain that the things he heard and saw weren’t real. Lance didn’t deserve to have a boyfriend that was so fucked in the head. The two of them had enough to deal with since they were both high school boys that were dealing with pretty severe mental problems.

“I’m sorry.” He muttered. “I’m really sorry.” 

Lance sat next to him and gently patted his back. “It’s okay. You don’t need to apologise. You haven’t done anything wrong. Whatever you’ve been seeing or hearing… It’s not real. We can work through this. Okay?”

“O-okay…” Keith sniffled and rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry. No matter how overwhelmed he was getting he didn’t want to cry in front of Lance. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Sure. Two doors down from my room. Room with the toilet in it.”

“I know.” Keith got up and walked out of the room towards the bathroom. Along the way he saw a few family photos. But there was something off about them. He stopped in front of a family photo framed on the wall and instantly felt uneasy, He could clearly see Lance, but his family… Their faces were smeared and warped. It didn’t look right. His mind wasn’t right.

He slipped into the bathroom and washed his face a few times. This was bad. Everything felt so horrible. He didn’t notice how nauseous he felt until now. His phone suddenly went off in his pocket. Probably Shiro. He probably found out that he and Lance were skipping school.

With a sigh he answered. “Hello?”

“Keith? Where are you?” Asked Shiro. “You weren’t in your English class and your teacher informed me about it. So where are you? Do you need to talk to someone? Do you need me to pick you up?”

“Relax Shiro, I just needed to get away from it all, and no not like I’m in any danger or anything. I’m with Lance.”

“Lance…”

“Yeah. I’m at his house right now.”

“...”

“Shiro?”

“Keith, you can’t be with Lance right now.”

A sense of dread quickly washed over him when he heard that. “W-what are you talking about Shiro? I-I’m with Lance. In his house. Why would you say that?”

“Because I am looking out the window and I’m seeing Lance and the rest of his gym class playing soccer.”

“Y-you don’t know it’s Lance. It could be anyone.”

“Trust me Keith.” Said Shiro. “No one I know wears that very distinct green jacket. So I’ll ask you again; where are you?”

Keith’s heart was racing. He opened up the bathroom door and felt like someone had slapped him in the face. He wasn’t inside anymore. He was outside. In the forest. He had no idea how he had gotten there. Why was he here? What happened? How? Was his whole interaction with Lance just his mind fucking with him? Had they even met in the classroom at lunch? How long had he been out here? How could he not have noticed.

He started to laugh nervously as he quickly turned around. He wasn’t at Lance’s place. Everything was a lie. His mind was warped and damaged to the point where he really didn’t know what was happening anymore.

“Keith? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I-I don’t know where I am.” Said Keith as he cautiously took a few steps forward. “I think I am in the forest, but I don’t know. Fuck, I thought I was in Lance’s house a few seconds ago for fuck’s sake. What do I do? What do I do?”

“Stay calm and try not to move. I’ll get a search party together and we will find you. Okay?”

“O-okay. Don’t hang up!”

“Keith, I have to hang up for a few minutes to organise a search party.” Said Shiro calmly. “You just stay where you are. Okay?”

“O-okay… Don’t take too long.”

“I won’t. It will be okay.”

“Okay… Please don’t take too long. I need you Shiro. I really need you right now.”

“I know.” Shiro hung up and Keith stood there and leaned against a tree.

He had no idea what to do now. Did he actually take a call from Shiro or was his head just completely fucking with him? Was he even in the forest right now? He didn’t know. He had no idea. He wanted to cry and scream in frustration, but for all he knew he was actually just at home in his bed and everyone would freak out if he started freaking out.

He sat down by a tree and curled up on himself. He didn’t know what to do. Could he trust his own mind. Could he trust anything? No he couldn’t. He started to cry.

***

When he looked up again he was surprised to notice that the sun was starting to set. Shiro hadn’t called him back. Had Shiro even called him? Probably not. He was lost out in the forest and no one actually knew where he was. He started crying again.

He was just a screw up. Just an average kid with a ridiculous amount of issues that just hurt everyone else. He wished he didn’t have to worry them so much. They all deserved better. He should just keep walking into the forest or wherever his mind had decided he actually was. Slowly Keith stood up and kept walking. He’d either find a way out or get even more lost. No big deal in his book at the moment.

Maybe he could find a path? But could he even trust himself if he found one? Maybe? He had no idea. He heard a twig snap behind him and he quickly turned around and saw Shiro. “Shiro!”

The older man sighed in relief. “Thank god you’re alright. You’re not hurt are you?”

“No I… Shiro, I need to go to a hospital… I’m not okay.”

He smiled kindly at Keith and carefully approached him. “It’s okay Keith. We can get you the help you need. It will be okay. I swear.”

Keith nodded a little and walked towards him, but paused when saw a flash of yellow in Shiro’s eyes. “No…”

“No?”

“No… You’re not real. None of this is real.” Shiro looked hurt, and it hurt Keith to say it, but he knew it was true. This was all just another hallucination. He quickly turned and ran away from him while Shiro called out for him to come back. He didn’t know where he was running, but he had to get away from that fake Shiro.

As he ran he could hear sounds in the wind whistling in the trees and it sounded like laughter. Oh fuck he was losing his mind. He was going crazy. He was crazy. Keith ended up collapsing onto the ground and clutched his head. He felt sick. Everything was too much for him.

He held his hands over his ears and closed his eyes to block out everything. But it sounded like laughter, and he would hear woodpeckers hammering away in the trees. All at the same time. All tapping out the same beat. An all too familiar beat over and over in his head.

“SHUT UP!” He screamed. “SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

Suddenly, as if anything actually listened to him, it all went quiet.

***

“I figured it out.” Said Pidge proudly.

Keith’s head snapped up and he felt a chill run down his spine. Why were they in class? Wasn’t he outside? In the forest? Why was he here? Keith was starting to sweat bullets. He wanted to faint or vomit. Maybe both?

“What did you figure out?” Asked Hunk. Keith jumped a little and looked around to see that Allua, Coran, and Shiro were in the room as well. It was like they were setting up for their next game session. But Lance wasn’t there.

“Indeed, tell us Pidge, what have you figured out.” Said Corna with a smile.

“I messed things up before.” They said. “I put the dots and dashes in the wrong spots. It was no wonder I had no idea what it was all saying.” They got up to walk to the white board. They knocked some papers off the desk that Hunk was sitting at. He immediately picked them up and started tapping out a beat as he collected them. “Yeah, just like that!” They quickly scribbled up the dots and dashes on the board.

**.--/.-/-.-/./..-/.--.**

“That’s different to before.” Said Hunk.

“Yeah, but I started in the middle.” Said Pidge. 

Allura clapped her hands together. “Oh, I think I get it. You just misinterpreted it. Simple things got scrambled in your mind and you put the wrong letters in, and depending on where the slash is you could have gotten a completely different letter, or word.”

“Well don’t keep us waiting Pidge.” Said Shiro. “What does it say?”

“Quite simple really. It says-”

***

Keith jumped in surprise as the hot desert wind quickly picked up and cut sand into his face like it was made from thousands of ground up pieces of glass. He flinched and tried to keep it out of his eyes, but it was difficult.

In the distance he saw something. He saw… A shack. A small shack. It had to be the radio shack. He quickly ran towards it as the sand storm started to pick up. He pulled open the door and inside he saw Lance. He had his back to him and was sitting in front of a radio. He didn’t seem to notice. But he was talking to someone.

_“U tnad tniw at ad suht Ogdup. Eoy tnic oos wah dokcef pe stu gnukim muh.”_ Said Lance.

_“Fu eay tnic ad tu ow nic dnos Aruhs.”_

_“An, tan Aruhs. U nic ovis Htuok u tsej…”_ Grumbled Lance.

_“Tnad yis eay doon oram omut Ocnil. Eay ovih at ad tu wan”_

Lance sighed heavily and ran his fingers through his hair. _“U… Kcef suht su gnuog at kces…”_

“You!” Snapped Keith. Lance jumped in his seat and turned around. He looked, kind of different. His features were less hollow and more filled out. He didn’t look malnourished. But it was still Lance. “You were the one on the radio the whole time?”

The tanned boy looked surprised for a few moments before he smiled kindly at him and stood up. “Not the whole time. But I bet a lot of what you have been hearing lately has been me. I’ve just been talking non stop. I need to talk to you non stop. I felt like I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t.”

“What? You talking to me?” Asked Keith in confusion. “What are you talking about? Lance this isn’t funny!”

“Do you see me laughing?” Asked Lance, and to be fair he actually looked serious. “Keith. I love you and believe me, everything I have done and am doing I do because I love you and I want you back. It will be okay I swear.” He walked past Keith and went to the door. “Keith, please trust me.”

Keith didn’t know why he did it, but he followed Lance. Maybe it was the sincere tone of his voice, or how he looked at him that just made Keith feel like he could trust him? It was a gut instinct. Insane or not he did love Lance and he trusted him. As foolish as that might be. He reached out to Lance and held his hand as they walked through the door. 

***

They were back in the forest, but this time they were on a cliff that overlooked everything Keith could see the whole town from up there right on the edge. Everything seemed so small. It was odd. He thought the town was bigger.

He felt Lance squeeze his hand as he sighed. “Strange place you came up with huh?”

“Hmm?”

“This town.” Said Lance. “It’s small but kind of nice… But like, would have been better without the mental trauma.”

“I know but we can’t choose what we have, right?”

“...” He squeezed Keith’s hand a little tighter. “Keith… If we fell from here we would die on impact. There are rocks lots of rocks on the ground.”

Keith looked over the edge and yeah, there were lots of painful looking rocks down there. Even if they survived it wouldn’t take very long for either of them to die after. “Yeah… So why are we here?”

“... Let’s jump.” Said Lance calmly. “Let’s jump together and end it all.”

“Wait, what?” Keith tried to pull his hand away but Lance held on tightly. “Let me go Lance!”

Lance’s grip just got tighter. “Remember Keith! Remember the promise we made! You do something stupid and die I will follow you!”

“... That was just in the game! It was all just a game you idiot!” Snapped Keith. “Can’t you tell the difference anymore?”

“Can’t you?” Asked Lance sternly. “How do you know that the game is fake and this is reality? Why can’t it be the other way around?”

“... Don’t do this to me Lance.” Keith warned. “I can’t do this now… I can’t.”

Lance smiled softly at him and walked towards the edge. “What have you got to lose here Keith? If this is real and I am right that this is all fake then we can get out of here. If I’m a hallucination than everything will be fine. You’ll just trip over and-”

“Keith!”

Keith looked over to see Shiro and his parents. They looked worried and Lance groaned in annoyance. “Perfect. The self preservation instincts have kicked in again.”

His mum smiled and cautiously started to walk towards him. “Keith, honey, please step away from the edge. Everything will be okay.”

Keith attempted to walk towards her, but Lance quickly pulled him back. “She’s not your mother.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She looks nothing like Krolia.” Said Lance calmly. “Do you really think Krolia would have taken you out of the hospital that would have the best care to make you better? She would have given you the best care in the world.”

“... I… No she…” He was right. His mum would have done anything for him to get better. Everything else… “She isn’t real.” 

Seconds later his mother was gone and it was his father standing in her place. It was like a glitch trying to fix itself somehow. “Keith. You need to get away from the edge.”

“Your dad has been dead most of your life.” Said Lance calmly. “I’m sorry Keith, but you told me he died in a fire. You were in the foster system most of your life. Shiro mentored you to become a pilot. The best pilot in the garrison… The best paladin of Voltron.”

A storm was brewing in Keith’s head. What Lance was saying made sense but it hurt. He didn’t want it to be real. Why did it have to be like this? Okay his life was really fucked up, but it was better to be a little fucked up in the head than essentially being forced into being a child soldier in an intergalactic war. He just wanted to let go of that responsibility and just be a teenager. He wanted to go to school and worry about what he’s going to score on the next test. He wanted to hang out with his friends.

Lance quickly pulled Keith into a hug and held him impossibly tightly. They were right on the edge now. They were alone again. Lance was holding him like he was his lifeline and Keith felt like he was going to cry again.

“And that Shiro… That’s not our Shiro. It’s not the Shiro you know.” Said Lance calmly. “Shiro would have protected you and you know it. You are his brother. Don’t ever think Shiro wouldn’t do anything for you. The real Shiro would never leave you and dismiss you the way he did. The real Shiro would never brush off your concerns like that.”

The real Shiro… Yes, this wasn’t real. None of this was real. Everything he had been hearing. Everything that he saw. None of it was real. It was all fake. Hallucinations. They had all been fake. Was any of this real? It couldn’t be. He had lost his mind a long time ago, hadn’t he? This was probably just the depressing fever dream of a dying boy about to be pulled off life support. Was this the best thing his brain could come up with before he completely died and ceased to be? How depressing.

“Keith… I love you. I’ll stand here with you as long as you want. I’m not going to let you do this by yourself.”

Was Lance just expecting Keith to just jump and be done with it? Everything was so confusing and he didn’t know what was real and what was fake. This could be real but it could be fake. He didn’t know what to think. He needed some kind of reassurance that this was the right thing to do.

“Kiss me.” He said quietly.

Lance tilted Keith’s chin up and they kissed. It was soft and tender and it felt real. It felt real to him. He hoped this was the right decision. Fuck he hoped it was the right decision. He didn’t know anymore and quite frankly at this point in time he just wanted to stop feeling so scared and confused all the time. Real or fake, dead or alive, or somewhere in between he wanted to end his own mental nightmare.

He clung tightly to Lance and pushed forward so that the two of them fell off the edge and hurtled towards the rocks below.

***

A primal scream ripped through Keith’s throat as he sat in his bed. His head was pounding. His neck hurt. His side hurt. His eyes were stinging and his cheeks were streaked with tears. He couldn’t tell if the tears were from what just happened or from the painfully bright lights in the med bay. He felt dizzy and sick. He felt like he was going to throw up but he had nothing in his stomach to do so.

Suddenly he was embarrassed in a tight hug. “Keith! Thank fuck that actually worked!” 

Keith looked down to see Pidge hugging him. He was a little in shock, but he quickly hugged them back. “Pidge?”

“Hey! What do you mean that actually worked?” Snapped Lance as he pulled some weird looking helmet off his head. “You said a shock like that would wake him up!”

“Honestly, it was either going to work or Keith would have just gone into a deeper layer. Like some inception shit.” Informed Pidge. “I’m gonna go and inform everyone else. They are going to be so happy you’re back.” 

They ran off out of the med bay leaving the two of them alone. Lance approached him and Keith started trembling. What was happening? This was real, right? It had to be. Was it? His mind was too jumbled up and confused at this point. This was real, right?

“Keith? Are you okay?” He reached out to hold Keith’s hand but Keith slapped it away. 

“No. Don’t touch me.”

Lance was surprised, but he didn’t look offended. “Keith… It’s me, Lance. Allura said you might be confused for a few hours after what the Galra did to you, but it will be okay. You just need to relax. You can answer questions later. Okay?” He offered Keith a tissue.

“... Okay.” He took the tissue and dried his eyes. He had no idea why he suddenly felt so tired. This was real, right? Didn’t he just die? What was the last thing he actually remembered that wasn’t all dream like?


	14. Awake and Alive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, here is how you crack the code;  
_Kniht lliy raf gnudior_
> 
> 1) Reverse each word in the phrase.  
_Think yill far roidung_
> 
> 2) Next you change each vowel so it matches the key down the bottom;  
I O U A E  
A E I O U  
_Thank yall for reading_
> 
> 3) After that just add any punctuation marks that have been removed.  
_Thank y’all for reading_
> 
> Not the hardest code in the world to crack but I hope any of you that had a go at cracking it had fun :D
> 
> Thank you all for reading. Kudos and comment when you can. Enjoy :D

It didn’t take too long for everyone to come into the med bay. Keith was still a little disorientated, but let Pidge and Coran performed medical checks on him to make sure he was okay. Hunk fussed over him, making sure he was still comfortable sitting on the med bay bed. Shiro did pretty much the same thing as Hunk, but was less overbearing. Allura was looking over Coran’s shoulder, but kept giving Keith reassuring smiles. Lance was… Lance wasn’t anywhere near him anymore. He was standing a bit away from everyone.

“So… What happened?” Asked Keith quietly. “The mission? Did we fail?”

“No.” Said Pidge. “It was technically a success. We got the information we were after and blew up most of the base. It just… You getting caught wasn’t part of the plan.”

Keith nodded a little. “I see… Do you know what they did to me?”

“They were trying to get information from you.” Said Coran. “One of the many underhanded Galran tactics that they use to get information. They pump you full of drugs and simulate a scenario that will keep you placid while slowly introducing subtle suggestions to make you willingly spill information. From the information we gathered before Pidge destroyed their machine, they were still in the initial phases of calibrating their machine for you.”

Pidge nodded in agreement. “The Galra don’t know much about human physiology so they needed a bit of time to make sure that they had the right senario ready before they could properly start taking information about Voltron from you.”

That kind of made sense. He looked down at his side and touched where he had been shot. “... I almost died…” He muttered. “I would have thought that they would have killed me if they found me…”

Allura shrugged. “Clearly you were more valuable to them alive than dead… And we are all grateful for that Keith.”

“You should probably head to your room now.” Said Shiro. “You’re probably very tired from the mental strain. Lance, can you help Keith get back to his room? We can fill you in on anything else later on once you’re up to it.”

“You got it Shiro.” Lance walked over and helped Keith to his feet. His whole body felt stiff and uncomfortable, but he didn’t use Lance for his balance, at least not when everyone was looking. When they were a decent way away from the med bay he leaned against Lance’s arm. Lance smiled and gently squeezed his arm. “It’s okay Keith, I got you.”

They got back to Keith’s room and both sat down on his bed. They were quiet for a moment before Keith spoke up. “In the end, that was you wasn’t it? You were the one in my head in the end asking me and telling me all these weird things?”

Lance shrugged. “Well kind of? Pidge and Hunk broke apart and rebuilt two of those mind reading headsets we used for all those team bonding exercises… I um, I couldn’t really do anything except go along for the ride, you know?”

“And the weird talking? What the fuck was that?”

Lance shrugged again. “Pidge probably has a more scientific explanation for it but like maybe it was just you trying to wake yourself up or something? Like, you knew what was being said around you and your brain was trying to make sense of it but it didn’t quite register? I don’t know. I haven’t been in a coma before… Are you okay?”

Keith shrugged. “I guess… I don’t know… I guess I’m a little shaken up?”

“It’s okay.” He smiled a little and gently held Keith’s hand. “So was your dream world really that convincing?”

Keith sighed and squeezed his hand. “At the time it was, but now that I think about it, it wasn’t. Like, I never met any new people. I don’t recall anyone’s faces that weren’t you guys. There were hardly any cars going around either… And everything was all weird and dream like. Like I don’t even know… How did you find me?”

Lance’s usual ever present smile wavered a little. “Well, like a day after the mission Pidge started scanning the area like crazy. We didn’t find anything and we just… I was so scared that you were… But I didn’t give up hope. I knew we would find you.”

“How did you know I was still alive?” Asked Keith. “Last you saw me I was bleeding out and my guts were falling out.”

“Red of course.” Said Lance like it was the most obvious thing ever. “In fact it was Red that found you.”

“She did?”

Lance nodded. “Yeah. So like, we thought it was just some Galra supply ship and we were going to disrupt it and take some of the supplies. But then Red lost her shit and just started ripping into the ship. She wouldn’t listen to me at all when I tried to pull her back.”

“Shit. She’s really protective huh?”

“Of course she is.” He nudged Keith’s arm and smiled. “So, she finally gives me a hint that you’re in there and you’re in big trouble. She even did some astral projection thing to find you.”

“So that’s what that was. I thought I died.” Mused Keith. “To be fair when Red found me my mind made me imagine Red as a mountain lion that went for my throat… I couldn’t understand a damn thing you said.”

Lance laughed. “To be fair I couldn’t really understand you either. You were whispering and I kind of heard bits and pieces…”

“So you saw everything going on in my mind?”

“Kind of? It was like being in a play and vaguely remembering bits and pieces in a script. It was weird…” He squeezed Keith’s hand. “Look, I think I should say sorry for like, um… Killing you…” 

“You didn’t actually do it.”

“But I did… I still did it.” Lance looked terrible.

Keith sighed sadly and pulled Lance close. “Lance, I know you only did that because that was the only thing you could think of. Right? You had to choose someone that I trusted to make me… Why wasn’t it Shiro?”

Lance laughed nervously. “Oh I um… I might have let it slip that um… That we are a thing?”

“... Yeah, of course you would…”

“Hey, would you rather have fallen off a cliff with me or have Shiro push you off?”

“... Fair point. So everyone knows we are a couple now?”

“Yeah… Are you mad at me?”

Keith shrugged. “A little, but if it’s a choice between you and a vague imitation of you, I’d rather have you.”

Lance grinned. “Aw, thanks Keith. I like the real you too… By the way if you do something stupid like that again and shoot me off in an escape pod I will turn that damn pod around and crash right back into the pod bay and shove your stupid, bleeding, suicidal ass into the pod and launch you to safety.”

“But-”

“No buts Keith… I already lost you once. I don’t think I could lose you again.”

“... I’m sorry. I know I’m reckless. Too reckless. I’m a pretty shitty boyfriend huh?”

“Yeah. It was pretty shitty, but you did save my life.” He quickly kissed Keith and smiled warmly at him. “You might have been an asshole boyfriend, but you were selfless and trying to do what was right.”

Keith blushed a little. “Okay… I’m still sorry though.”

“Hey, it’s all good. No reason to get upset now or anything. It’s okay. I promise.” He kissed Keith again and smiled lovingly at him. “So, want to watch some cute animal videos?” He held up his communicator and grinned.

Keith smiled a little and nodded. “Sure.” He snuggled up to Lance and happily watched some cute alien animal videos with him. This was more normal. This actually felt right compared to the strange choppy nature of his mind. And just like any other dream he'd had before, Keith was already forgetting all about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading. This was the first time I've tried to meld two stories together into one (code cracking and all that jazz). It was a little hard at times but very rewarding. If you enjoyed this please check out some of my other stuff. I have some Voltron stories and some from other fandoms. I really enjoyed being able to read your comments every day and seeing the joy you guys had when you eventually cracked the code yourselves :D
> 
> So to those that left a kudos and comment, thank you. Those who just left a comment, thank you. Those that just left a kudos, thank you. Those that just read it when the next chapter, thank you. I had a blast writing this and I hope you had a blast reading it :D


End file.
